The Road
by Dinosaurbones6
Summary: Itachi's illness progresses. What is it? How will he keep it at bay until the time comes for Sasuke to take his revenge? (Note: Obito is not referred to by his real name; here, he goes by "Madara.") Cross-posted on my tumblr: dinosaur-bones6. And now on my AO3: dinosaurbones.
1. And if You Don't Keep Your Feet

**The Road**

1\. And if You Don't Keep Your Feet. . .

* * *

Itachi had been unwell for a while. It wasn't a normal illness; it wasn't going away. It was getting worse, that much he could no longer deny. Breathing hurt almost all the time; he coughed frequently; and he was tired—so tired. Kisame had noticed weeks ago that his partner was weakened, but Itachi was never willing to discuss his mysterious illness. However, when Itachi began coughing up blood, they both knew the condition was serious.

There just wasn't _time_ to be sick. Itachi was already stretched thin, having to watch his back constantly around the Akatsuki, play his role as a wanted criminal, and keep an eye out for ninja who attacked him and Kisame for their bounties. Madara also remained a looming concern. Itachi couldn't pin the masked man's objectives, but he didn't trust him. Not one bit. So when Madara materialized among the shadowy trees behind him while Kisame was gathering intel, Itachi was immediately on guard. Even more hair-raising was Madara's knowledge of Itachi's waning health.

Itachi kept his back half turned to Madara as he focused his chakra in his eyes. "It's none of your concern."

"You wouldn't want to die before you've accomplished your goal," goaded the faceless man.

Itachi finally turned to Madara with glowing red eyes. Itachi reminded himself that Madara didn't know his real goal. _He's trying to bait me_. He didn't allow himself to react to the provocation. For all Madara knew, Itachi was after the eternal Mangekyō sharingan. That was all the man needed to know. However, Madara was right about one thing: Itachi could not afford to die yet. But it wasn't as if Itachi could show up at a hospital and expect treatment as a regular patient. Any shinobi hospital would recognize him as the S-class rogue, the clan-killer Itachi Uchiha.

"I know someone."

Itachi's eyes narrowed. He was alone. The sun would set in half an hour, and then Kisame would return from the village just beyond the woods where Itachi waited. Itachi did not fully know what Madara was capable of or why he was offering to help. But Madara was not to be trusted.

"Are you wondering who might aid a mercenary?" A cunning smirk was in Madara's voice.

Itachi had, in fact, been wondering as much, but he chose not to speak yet.

"Even among medical ninja, many bleeding hearts don't move for just anyone. This one is one of those compassionate exceptions. And she's talented. One short trip to Ishigakure could have you sorted."

Itachi wasn't interested. He didn't need to get involved in another covert scheme with more pawns, more criminals. He still hated himself for the last time he had asked Madara for help. Itachi's lungs contracted, and his eyes burned and jaw locked from his effort to stifle the cough that scratched at his throat.

Madara didn't miss the way Itachi's shoulders and chest curved inward—of course, he never missed anything. "Consider it," he suggested with feigned kindness, "but don't wait too long. You never know what might be wreaking havoc in your body."

Madara disappeared with a slow circular wave of his arm, and Itachi collapsed into a painful coughing fit. He braced one hand against a tree as he knelt and choked, feeling the strain in from his abdomen to his temples. By the time his paroxysms ended, he was wheezing breathlessly and clutching his pounding head. The tang of blood coated his tongue, and Itachi spat forcefully. He grimaced at the red splotches on the grass by his feet. And he was tired, so tired that his eyelids suddenly felt unbearably heavy. His sharingan faded as Itachi sat, wincing, at the base of his support tree and let his head fall back against rough bark. He didn't let himself close his eyes yet. The sky was starting to turn gray; he had less than fifteen minutes to wait. He would stay alert until Kisame arrived.

* * *

He was supposed to be sleeping. Kisame had the first watch since Itachi had been too drained from the coughing fits in the evening to stay awake. He hadn't even had dinner. Although Itachi had fallen asleep quickly, his eyes opened again only two or three hours later. His chest hurt.

Ishigakure. The village didn't have a savory reputation. It was known mostly for harboring renegades and otherwise desperate folk, exactly the sort of people Madara and the Akatsuki sought to manipulate. Itachi wondered going there could be truly helpful. However, attempting to find skilled aid in a more highly developed village would cause only trouble for Itachi, and his simple homeopathic remedies were doing nothing for him. Kisame had already half-joked that Itachi would bite the dust soon if he continued this way. Itachi knew he had to do more. He couldn't die yet. He couldn't rob Sasuke of his vengeance, his justice. He had to die according to plan. Regardless of Madara's intentions, Itachi had to survive this illness. Just long enough.

* * *

Madara appeared again three days later, but this time, he was interrupted by Kisame's sudden intrusion.

"Oh! Kisame! It's been a while!" he greeted the larger man in the loud, enthusiastic affect of Tobi.

"Yo, Tobi!" Kisame grinned toothily as he sauntered toward Itachi and the masked man. "What brings you here?"

"I'm here on an important errand." Tobi puffed up his chest proudly, arms akimbo. "You know, your partner here isn't looking too good. You beatin' him up lately?"

Itachi glowered at the orange mask taunting him.

Kisame grunted, distracted from Tobi's unexplained "errand." He cast a subtly disapproving glance at the back of Itachi's head. "You noticed, too, eh? I keep telling him it might be something serious, but he insists otherwise."

Itachi said nothing as waves of annoyance radiated darkly from him.

Tobi nodded eagerly. "Mm! You know, I happen to have a nurse in Ishigakure who might help—no allegiances necessary. It wouldn't hurt to check, right?"

Kisame's eyes hardened on Itachi. "Well, now! Ishigakure is only two days away on foot. If you leave now, I'll be able to keep an eye on things here."

Itachi stifled an annoyed click of his tongue. He had been considering Madara's deal, anyway, so Madara's Tobi performance, his apparent effort to involve Kisame, didn't seem necessary to Itachi. What was Madara planning? Was this part of the plan at all, or was Madara simply improvising now that Kisame had discovered them?

Although he was still undecided, Itachi nodded wordlessly at Kisame. Tobi cheered, pumping a fist in the air, and then he and Itachi took off.


	2. Where Many Paths and Errands Meet

2\. Where Many Paths and Errands Meet

* * *

Madara paused on top of a giant plateau on Ishigakure's eastern border, and Itachi waited a few paces behind him. Itachi didn't speak, but Madara already knew that the younger ninja was questioning his intent.

"Wait here," Madara ordered without looking at Itachi, "I'm going to let my contact know to expect you."

Itachi glared at Madara's back, irritated by his lack of information and by Madara's relaxed stance around him. He was still so much more powerful than Itachi. However, Itachi said nothing. He watched Madara's body spiral into the hole of his orange mask, the process still as mystifying as ever, before he finally lowered his guard slightly. He let out a shallow sigh through his nose but was interrupted by a painful cough. Once it passed, he put his hand to his chest and approached the edge of the rock.

The village below didn't evoke pleasant feelings in Itachi. He had been only once before on a mission, but even before that assignment, he had known Ishigakure to be a hard and unsavory place. He would have to watch his back here, especially around anyone under Madara's influence.

* * *

A swirl of orange and black quickly took the shape of a man on a jagged road. A stone building stood before him; inside, medical personnel and patients flowed back and forth, in and out, in a fluctuating circadian rhythm. Ishigakure's main hospital was short and stocky as if it had been carved out of a boulder instead of built from the ground up. Many of the buildings in the Land of Stone were low-lying like this; the village's history of local terrorists as well as invaders from Amegakure, the Land of Earth, and the Land of Wind meant that taller, more vulnerable construction projects were, for the most part, out of the question.

Madara, as he fashioned himself, narrowed his senses on a particular chakra signature within the hospital. He found the chakra at the back of the building, probably in one of the tiny break rooms provided for low-rank staff members. The chakra's owner was alone, so Madara made his move. He disappeared gradually, and when he rematerialized, he was standing before a young woman in her early twenties. Her skin was a golden tan, and her mousy brown hair was tied in a high, tight ponytail that grazed the nape of her neck. Her build was naturally broad and athletic, but she didn't have the muscle tone of an active ninja.

Her eyes widened—surprise, horror, anger—at the sight of him before she stole cautionary glances over her shoulders. When she faced the man again, her eyes were narrowed, and her mouth was a thin line.

"It's been a while, Sachi Harada," Madara greeted, his aura amused and full of superiority.

"You've got a lot of nerve showing up here in the middle of the day," the woman hissed, cringing at the coldness with which the man spoke her full name.

"Should I be worried?"

Although Sachi couldn't see the masked man's face, she had the impression that he was grinning at her. They both knew that not one individual in this building could stand a chance against him.

"What do you want? Make it quick. I don't want to be seen with you," she grouched, body tense.

"I have a job for you." Madara let a grain of severity rattle in his voice along with a subtle expansion of chakra. It was just enough for Sachi to lower her chin timidly though her eyes continued to burn with resentment. She fixed her gaze on Madara's neck and shoulders, keenly avoiding crossing his sharingan if he activated it. "As associate of mine needs assistance."

Sachi's face darkened further. "Assistance?"

"Treatment, really." The man's shoulders didn't move, but his voice carried a shrug.

Doubt flashed briefly in Sachi's eyes, a clear conflict between her reluctance to help Madara and her duty to help the needy. Madara had known she wouldn't resist. In a low, hesitant voice, she asked, "How serious is the injury?"

Concealing his smug satisfaction, Madara answered, "It isn't an injury that we know of. I'm sure you can determine what exactly he has."

A frustrated breath shot from Sachi's nose, but she said nothing. She understood that she was expected to diagnose this _associate_ and cure, if possible, whatever he had. She just hoped this case wouldn't be difficult. Sachi was not a diagnostician; she wasn't even a salaried doctor. Even though she was a medic, she was still just a chūnin. She had neither the legal authority nor the resources to handle rare diseases. However, Sachi Harada was good at her job. If a person, no matter how deplorable, asked her for medical aid, she thought she had to try. In her mind, people were people regardless of allegiances, philosophies, and past deeds, and medics helped people. Madara and his band of mercenaries, the Akatsuki, knew all this. They used her occasionally. So here she was.

"I can be ready at six," she breathed, her eyes on the table between her and the masked man.

"Then we will meet at the usual place." There was an unquestionable finality in Madara's tone. "Your help is invaluable."

Sachi resisted the urge to sneer. She wasn't surprised when Madara's body disappeared, slowly pulled into that strange hole in space. In fact, she was relieved when he was finally gone. The man's presence always made her blood run cold, and her back was damp with sweat. Every ounce of her body dreaded the upcoming meeting with him and his associate, who was probably a wanted criminal. She would be stuck in a small room with two dangerous men. She tried to believe that because she was useful they wouldn't kill her, but the nauseating knot in her stomach remained. Just how long could she be useful to murderers?

* * *

Sachi left work at four thirty, as usual; however, her footsteps were much heavier than usual. She decided to get dinner now since she didn't know how long her meeting would take. God, she didn't want to meet with Madara and another Akatsuki member. She hated that she hadn't asked for the other man's name—she could have looked up some information about her patient before trapping herself in a room with him. She was walking in blind.

 _Stupid, stupid move_ , she silently berated herself. Sachi couldn't afford to be so reckless. She had her own things to take care of.

The meeting place Madara had spoken of was a square room in a crumbling, shadowy hotel. The room was capable of holding only up to four or five adults comfortably. The building was made of clay, so despite the limited space, the room, with its dusty couch and clunky desk and semi-partitioned sleeping area turned examination room, felt more like a den than a medical office. The fact that the hotel was abandoned meant that it had gone unmaintained for a long time and so didn't attract even the unscrupulous types. Only the poorest of drifters occasionally sheltered in it, and they weren't intimidating to even Sachi let alone ninja of the Akatsuki. As such, the space suited the Akatsuki as an emergency hideout and was complete with basic medical supplies and preserved food as well as spare fabric and blankets. As an unofficial affiliate of the Akatsuki, Sachi had access to this hideout. In fact, since it was located in her hometown and since the official members rarely visited, Sachi was the only one who used the room regularly, and she had begun to repurpose it as her own office and storage space.

Sachi paused stiffly before the dilapidated building. She expanded her suppressed chakra, sensing the interior while still maintaining her concealed presence.

Two chakra signatures. They were here.

Letting out a breath, Sachi stepped inside the dark hotel. She strode, footsteps brisk and silent, to the seal at the staircase to the basement. Once the seal was released and closed again behind her, she went straight for the only room that still had a door and all four walls. Despite her efforts to remain calm and collected, Sachi's heart was pounding. She could almost feel it thumping in her ribcage. Already, her hands felt clammy, and sweat was beginning to collect on her skin, rolling down her neck. She was getting a tension headache from the tightness of her ponytail, so she took her hair down and twisted it in a loose braid instead, partly just to keep her hands busy. She wiped her hands on her thighs and then decided not to stall any long. It was time to meet Madara and his . . . associate. Friend? Pawn? She wondered what kind of person would willingly work with Madara Uchiha.

She opened the door quickly and closed it soundlessly behind her. Inside the room, two dark figures awaited her. The first thing Sachi noticed was that the gas lamps, two by the door, one in the back corner, and a small one on the desk near the middle of the room, were on. At almost the same time, she noted the positions of the two people in the room: Madara's lithe form leaning casually in the corner, arms crossed, and a figure in a thick black coat decorated with red clouds standing in the middle of the room.

The stranger was a young person, a man, if she correctly remembered the pronouns Madara had used to refer to his colleague. He turned to Sachi when she entered. The high collar of the Akatsuki cloak obscured the lower half of his face, so Sachi's gaze was naturally drawn to his eyes. She had to repress a shudder as she caught the edge of a red glow before quickly looking away, toward Madara. She didn't like to admit it, but she hated making eye-contact with people, visual jutsu or no. Eyes disturbed her. They were nothing but soft pockets of jelly in people's skulls, shiny and expressive and hypnotizing. As a child, she'd often had nightmares about the way they might squish or pop under a little too much pressure, the way they would ooze away upon a person's death, the way they might be torn out of a person's head. She still felt sick and weak-kneed whenever she accidentally remembered the time she'd had to flip back a patient's eyelid and extract a piece of glass from his cornea.

Pushing her discomfort down, Sachi gazed at the two men levelly. She tried not to feel cornered under the piercing stares of two sharingan users.

"Right on time," Madara's smooth, deep voice rumbled. "Sachi, meet your new patient, Itachi."

Sachi turned her eyes back to the young man, Itachi, but didn't look up past his cloak's collar.

Itachi. . . Itachi Uchiha. For he _was_ an Uchiha since he had sharingan. This meant he was related to Madara, no matter how distantly. And it meant that he was _the_ Itachi Uchiha, the S-ranked missing-nin of Konohagakure, the young prodigy who massacred his clan. And Madara Uchiha was . . . Madara Uchiha. He was legendary. He was supposed to be dead, but here he was, as unstoppable as he probably ever was. These men might have been kindred spirits in infamy and death-dealing; maybe that was why they were working together now.

"Please, have a seat." Her arm swept a wide arc over the room, gesturing past the two chairs, sofa, and cot turned examination table. Anticipating that the newcomer wouldn't make the first move and to prevent her legs from giving out, Sachi moved to the swivel chair at the small desk, ignoring the undignified squeak that sounded when she sat. Making a show of turning her back toward her guests, and ignoring the prickle of fear that resulted, she pulled a clipboard and pen from her desk and onto her lap before facing Itachi again.

Itachi watched her with unreadable eyes, but soon he too sat, choosing an armless chair directly across from her. Madara, on the other hand, kept his distance. He was a shadow that Sachi could almost forget about if not for his quietly menacing aura.

"I won't stay the whole time if it isn't prudent," he spoke, as if he needed an excuse to do whatever he wanted. "But if the examination is quick, we can be out of here quickly, too."

Sachi stifled a twinge annoyance. Normally, patient interactions were one-on-one. Confidential. But, of course, Madara had to stick his nose into everything. And he had to pressure her for time. Sachi inhaled softly, dimly aware of the air changing around her, chakra resettling.

"So." Sachi fixed her gaze determinedly on Itachi's face, mildly though pleasantly surprised to see dark brown eyes looking back at her. "How are you?"

She kicked herself mentally. In her nervousness, she had defaulted to the question all doctors and nurses used to open medical discussions. "What is your chief complaint?"

Itachi didn't answer right away. He seemed to be puzzling out a way to answer her question, no doubt uncomfortable with Madara's presence, as any patient with an audience would be, so Sachi waited quietly.

"Coughing," he stated finally. His voice was calm and surprisingly deep, at least compared to the softness of his eyes. "Shortness of breath. Pain in my chest."

Sachi's pen had been moving since Itachi's first word, diligently taking notes in shorthand. She wasn't sure where to start. Normally, this kind of appointment started before she even saw the patient because the patient would fill out paperwork beforehand about their family history and medical information. Right now, though, Sachi knew nothing about the man before her or what factors of his genetics and lifestyle would be relevant to her diagnosis. She didn't even know how old he was, though she supposed she could find that bit of information in the Bingo Book. Nevertheless, to get the most accurate picture of his health, she had to start from the beginning.

She looked up from her notes and asked, "When was the last time you had a physical exam?"

Itachi blinked her, apparently caught off guard.

"A full physical. Anywhere," Sachi clarified.

"Years ago," Itachi answered slowly.

"Would you be willing to have one today?"

"All right."

"And are you willing to answer some questions about your medical and family history?"

Itachi stared at her hard, but Sachi stared right back, propelled by sheer professionalism.

"Yes."

Sachi pulled the blank piece of paper off her clipboard to reveal a copy of the patient intake sheet from her hospital. She'd stolen several copies back when she'd first started using this room, predicting that they might come in handy. Naturally, Itachi wouldn't need to fill out anything regarding his residence or insurance coverage, but the questionnaire section would provide some useful background information.

She held out the clipboard and pen to Itachi. "Please answer the questionnaire honestly. Your health depends on it."

Itachi took his time reviewing the form, appearing to carefully consider each answer. Sachi couldn't decide if she should suspect dishonesty or if she should appreciate his diligence. When he handed the form back to her, she read each line slowly, noting on her scratch paper that Itachi had indicated no family history of asthma, heart disease, or cancer. These were Sachi's first three hypotheses when Itachi had listed his symptoms.

"Any history of high blood pressure?" she asked, noticing a blank line in the form.

"Not personally, but I don't know about my family."

Sachi scribbled a note on her scratch paper before slipping the intake form under her scratch paper. She asked Itachi all the routine questions: when the symptoms had begun, what his level of pain was, what kind of pain he felt and where. He answered curtly every time, and Sachi made detailed notes about his answers and appearance, everything from his complexion to his energy level and breathing.

"Any blood in your mucus?" she asked, still peering at her notes.

"A little, recently. There's more when I cough."

Sachi looked at Itachi, her whole body stilling. She made one quick note before sliding the clipboard on the desk, stopping herself just before she stood.

"I'm going to begin examining you," she explained. "I want to start with taking your temperature and blood pressure as well as your height and weight. I'll check your ears, nose, and throat; then, I'll check your chest and abdomen. After that, if you're still comfortable, I might ask you to strip entirely."

Madara shifted from his corner. "I don't need to stay for this. I trust you to handle it, Sachi. Will an hour be enough time?"

Sachi pursed her lips in thought. "Maybe make it two. . ."

The masked man waved his hand dismissively, almost cordially. "It doesn't matter. Itachi, you know how to summon me when you're through."

Itachi cast a sidelong glance at Madara but said nothing. Sachi felt an indescribable tension in the air as she waited for Madara to leave—maybe Itachi wanted him gone, too. Maybe the two men weren't friends, after all. When Madara's body did finally waver and slip away into nothingness, Sachi felt her shoulders relax. She knew letting down her guard was a mistake the second it happened; Itachi's eyes were on her, boring into her. Round, wet, gleaming, eyes. Eyes that could shine red. She felt as though he could read every little movement she made.

Ignoring the goosebumps that rose on the back of her neck and arms, Sachi rose from her seat and faced Itachi. With a soft-spoken "this way," she led him to the examination table and instructed him to remove his coat. He complied easily enough, stepping on the scale when asked, sitting still, taking deep breaths, opening his mouth, turning his head. She looked straight in his eyes to check for discoloration, excess or lack of moisture, and inflammation; it was her least favorite part of any examination, and something about Itachi's gaze, unmoving and dark and unreadable like simmering coals, was more unsettling than any other patient's. But at least it was over quickly. She noted some irritation but decided not to worry about that unless it persisted the next time she saw him. They didn't speak to each other except when necessary, and Sachi did the majority of the talking since she took the time to explain each test before performing it and share what she found.

"All right." Sachi stepped away from Itachi. "Shirt and pants off. Underwear can stay."

Sachi busied herself with her notetaking while Itachi silently removed his clothes. When he was sitting on the cot again, Sachi gestured at him to lie back.

"I'm going to check your organs, first physically then with chakra." She waited for Itachi's consent—a nod, in this case—and began pressing and tapping her fingers along his belly. Nothing felt inflamed, nothing sounded wrong, and Itachi indicated no soreness or pain. The only anomalies were the slight swelling of his cervical and supraclavicular lymph nodes.

"Does that hurt?" She kept her tone even as she pressed above his collarbone.

"No, but there's pressure."

"Your lymph nodes are swollen," she explained. "You might have an infection."

She withdrew her hands briefly and watched Itachi's face, skimming, as was her habit, over his eyes. "After this, I'd like to draw some blood for testing. If it is an infection, we won't be able to treat it unless we know what kind it is."

Itachi's expression didn't change as his chin bobbed downward.


	3. Tighten Our Belts and Trudge On

3\. Tighten Our Belts and Trudge On

* * *

After perhaps the longest examination of her career, Sachi sealed her samples of Itachi's blood in a scroll and returned to the hospital where she could run as many tests as she could without getting caught. She had to make up an excuse to the lab technician about needing extra hours so that she would let Sachi hover by the samples. She couldn't let the results stay in hospital records; she would have to throw away the samples once the tests were done and smuggle the results out.

Itachi's exam had gone smoothly. Overall, he seemed to be a healthy young man: eighteen years old; no history of lung problems or other serious illness; no recent injuries; no known family history of cancer, asthma, or vascular issues. He had strong bones and muscles, if somewhat tight, and all of his vital signs and organs were normal. Except his lungs. There was definitely something in his lungs. He described a mostly healthy diet, no smoking or drinking, and only occasional constipation. He even claimed not to be sexually active. If that were true, and Sachi thought it was since Itachi had been straightforward throughout the appointment, then his coughing and hemoptysis wouldn't be caused by a sexually transmitted infection. Furthermore, the lymph nodes in his groin weren't swollen, and his genitals were free of redness, swelling, or sores—an infection there was unlikely.

Of course, Sachi was testing for venereal diseases, anyway. She couldn't be too careful, especially since such infections could be sneaky and go without external symptoms until they did serious damage. A number of things could cause Itachi's symptoms: pneumonia, which she would have to specify carefully in order to treat; cancer; pulmonary embolism; and tuberculosis were probably the most serious. But simple bronchitis could also be the culprit. His heart was beating normally, which ruled out congestive heart failure, and he wasn't taking any medication, which meant no bleeding as a side-effect. Her chakra exam hadn't detected any obvious arteriovenous malformations, either. Everything was working fine except that weird inflammation or blockage in his lungs; Sachi would need to check that out again more closely.

The only other swelling was in the lymph nodes in Itachi's neck and chest, another sign of infection in his lungs. Sachi's first guess was pneumonia, but since Itachi's lungs had sounded normal, she was forced to rule it out. Therefore, Sachi suspected TB but kept in the back of her mind the possibility of another infection, perhaps venereal, reaching his bloodstream and his lungs. Another worrisome symptom was Itachi's claim of decreased appetite and slight weight loss. When he'd stepped on the bathroom scale, Sachi had agreed that he was lean, but since he wasn't technically underweight, Sachi had simply advised him to eat more protein and healthy fats. Meanwhile, she would check for everything she thought reasonable.

The worst part would be the waiting. The first result would come from the skin test for TB, and that would take up to seventy-two hours. Sachi had told Itachi to meet her back at the hideout in three days, but after that, the other tests would take at least another four days to complete. Throughout that time, Sachi had to hope that no one would discover the unscheduled and, therefore, unapproved lab work and fake patient file she'd had to create. She would have to delete the file and move the information periodically, again without attracting anyone's attention, to cover up her fraud. Anxiety was already eating at her. She doubted she'd get any sleep that week, but all she could do was push through.

* * *

The exam ended, and Itachi dressed quickly. He didn't want to summon Madara right away though. After the medical-nin, Sachi, left, Itachi circled the room, sharingan activated. Part of him was reeling from the vulnerability and awkwardness of having a stranger touch him. Although Sachi had been perfectly conscientious and professional, if a little curt, Itachi was so unaccustomed to exposing himself that he'd started sweating anxiously when she'd touched him. The pressing on his throat and pelvis had made him especially nervous, as had the feeling of her chakra flowing over and into him from her hands. He wondered if Sachi had noticed the distress he'd tried to hide, yet he was glad he didn't know. All in all, it was an uncomfortable experience that he hoped he wouldn't have to repeat.

To distract himself, he studied every corner of his surroundings, every drawer and shelf and hidden space. He found kunai and various paper seals—fire, smoke, sealing, barrier—and shuriken; he found blankets and clothes and food pills; pain medicine and antiseptic along with gloves, gauze, bindings, and other medical supplies that Itachi couldn't identify; scratch paper and scrolls. The small bathroom in the back of the room had a tub and some old towels as well as soap, Epsom salt, and more first-aid supplies. He easily found the concealed doors in the floor and eastern wall. It was as Madara had said: a small but well-prepared hideout. However, Itachi found no information either pertaining to the Akatsuki or about Sachi Harada. As usual, all he knew was what Madara had told him.

* * *

 _Itachi sat with his eyes closed and hands on his knees atop the plateau where Madara had left him. When he heard footsteps approach, he stood slowly._

 _"_ _I've arranged an appointment," Madara spoke. "We have three hours."_

 _"_ _Where?" Itachi kept his tone curt, hoping Madara would give him a rendezvous point and leave._

 _"_ _One of Akatsuki's emergency hideouts. It's nothing special, but it's functional. Come." With a body flicker jutsu, Madara was gone, and Itachi took after him wordlessly._

 _When Madara led him to a building seemingly on the verge of collapse, Itachi carefully concealed his skepticism. He wondered if a place like this were really suited for the Akatsuki's needs, but as he watched Madara release a seal to a descending staircase, he thought that the place must have more to offer than what met the eye. Indeed, the building's lower level was considerably more stable and lined with thick stone, almost like a fortified bunker. The barrier seal around it added extra security, as well. Itachi wanted to examine this place more closely if he got a chance to be alone. The basement had two rooms that Itachi could immediately see, one of them with a large whole in the wall that left it exposed and, as indicated by the rubble piled inside, probably unusable. The second room had a closed door, which Madara opened and walked through first, leaving Itachi to close it again._

 _Itachi took in his surroundings while Madara turned on a series of lights before settling in a corner toward the back. Then, Madara spoke. He explained the room's purpose before turning the topic to the medic they were to meet._

 _"_ _A medical-nin name Sachi Harada will meet us here._ _Although she is only a chūnin, her medical ninjutsu is excellent._ _"_

 _Itachi felt his eyebrows rise before he could stop them._

 _"_ _Don't let that fool you," Madara chided, clearly amused. "She has some tricks up her sleeve."_

 _"_ _If she isn't part of the Akatsuki, how do you know that she's trustworthy?" Itachi questioned._

 _"_ _An excellent question, but there's no need to worry. She and I have an arrangement."_

Just as you and I have an arrangement? _Itachi's eyes narrowed, but he didn't voice the thought. Madara had described her as a "bleeding heart" earlier; did that make her compassionate or foolish? How could a chūnin get entangled with Madara and the Akatsuki? Even with a few "tricks up her sleeve," anyone under jōnin level shouldn't have appeared on Madara's radar._

 _"_ _An arrangement?" he challenged, frowning. "With a chūnin-level medical-nin?"_

 _"_ _Expect everything, and nothing will surprise you." Even through the mask, Madara's arrogance was obvious—it was palpable. "Will you feel better if I tell you a little more about her? She was a chūnin briefly before being moved to work in Ishi's largest hospital. A sensor type with at least two nature transformations: earth and water. No kekkei genkai. Does that paint a better picture of her?"_

 _Madara's tone was easygoing, but Itachi was certain that the man was mocking him. It didn't matter, though; Itachi was busy digesting this new information. A chūnin with medical ninjutsu as well as two nature transformations. It didn't make sense. The woman was clearly a gifted kunoichi, so her superiors must have had some reason for holding her back. There was still a missing piece to this puzzle. Madara, however, either didn't know all the details or didn't want to share them. Itachi decided to let the matter go for now; the information wasn't necessary to his being here._

* * *

Itachi still didn't understand how Sachi and Madara knew each other. He was also surprised by how well she concealed her chakra even during the ninjutsu exam. If Madara hadn't told him that she had learned two nature transformations, an ability which automatically implied jōnin-level skill, Itachi might have underestimated her. There was a chance that she had managed to conceal some of her abilities from Madara as well; in fact, Itachi remembered that Madara had said Sachi had "at least" two nature releases, so maybe Madara was uncertain. Sachi, then, could be dangerous if Itachi didn't keep his guard up.

With a quiet sigh, he decided he'd taken enough time to collect his thoughts and summoned Madara as he was taught five years ago. He concentrated his thoughts and chakra on a mental image of Madara, and suddenly, Madara himself appeared before him.

"How did it go?" the man asked, stepping toward Itachi.

Itachi didn't move. "She took blood samples and said she would run some tests. I won't know anything more for seventy-two hours."

Madara nodded and crossed him arms. "Then I'll leave the rest to you. You're free to use this hideout, of course, now that you know where it is. Good luck, Itachi."

With his last note sounding more sinister than genuine, Madara disappeared into his swirling vortex, and Itachi was left blessedly alone. He let his shoulders relax. He was stuck here for the next two days, so he wanted to make the most of his time of solitude. First, he would get some food, finally, and, if he were lucky, sleep.


	4. In a New Light

4\. In a New Light

* * *

In the morning, Itachi sent an update via crow to Kisame. It wasn't a detailed message; it contained only the information that he'd be detained in Ishigakure for three days. But it was a courtesy that he and his partner had developed since, as a two-man team, they were expected to be able to respond to their leader's orders together and be generally informed of each other's whereabouts. He didn't think Kisame would bother to come here himself; the man probably had his own business to attend to, and that suited Itachi just fine. Although he was tense with the possibility of being called for a mission, he relished the idea of having time alone. Solitude was such a rare and precious privilege now. He felt like he could breathe easier without malicious eyes watching him for any moments of weakness or disloyalty.

Activating a transformation jutsu and leaving his Akatsuki coat behind, Itachi left the hideout under one of his favored guises, that of an unknown man he'd observed long ago in Konoha. It was a generic face of a generic citizen. Although this face was perhaps a little pale for this climate, it was perfect for blending in with a civilian population.

As he set out, Itachi felt indescribably, breathtakingly . . . anxious. It was unsettling, walking among ordinary folk without a mission and without a partner. He hadn't been truly alone for the past five years, and he was surprised by how uncomfortable the sudden freedom was. However, by the end of the day, he had a strong though general understanding of Ishi's urban layout, and he found a very nice traditional café that he promised himself he would revisit. He observed many types of people, finding amusement in watching a group of children dance around each other competitively. And they really were dancing—not sparring or fighting, as Itachi initially assumed. Just dancing, to a lively melody provided by a boy carrying a shamisen. The children clapped and cajoled each other, stomping and whistling and laughing, as if the precariousness of their village's situation between two great nations didn't affect them, as if years of combat and instability didn't continue to shape the actions and ideas of the people around them. For some reason, he hadn't expected to find such lightheartedness in a place like Ishi.

When he returned to the hideout in the evening, he enjoyed a long soak in the bath tub, taking advantage of the Epsom salt to soothe his aching muscles. His left shoulder and arm had been bothering him for a while, since a few weeks before his brief return to Konoha. Four months had already passed since then. He suspected he had a sprained muscle or tendon somewhere that hadn't healed, but since he was always on the move, he couldn't do much to treat the pain. He simply put it out of his mind whenever he could. For now, however, the hot water was soothing. Itachi hadn't expected to relax fully, but at some point, he ended up dozing off, all warm and quiet in the water. He skin was thoroughly pruney by the time he stepped out.

The next day, boredom got to him. He had never enjoyed excessive time off; he'd always felt that any time not dedicated to his missions, to his family, or to improving himself somehow, whether by training or studying, was time wasted. So early in the morning, Itachi travelled outside Ishi to a secluded stretch of land littered with impressive boulders, arches, plateaus, and other rock formations. This was near the place where he'd first viewed Ishi. Back then, he'd determined the area free enough of traffic to allow an undisturbed battle, so it was perfect for shuriken and ninjutsu training.

Itachi stood in the center of a group of high pillars and arches made of rock and sand. He marked his targets mentally and, with a hard kick, jumped high in the air. With a rapid corkscrew flip, he was upside down, eight kunai between his fingers, and still in midair, he sent the kunai flying. Eight sharp _thuds_ sounded before Itachi landed. When he looked around, every weapon had hit its mark.

* * *

At five fifty-five p.m. the following day, Sachi entered the Akatsuki's repurposed hotel room. Itachi was nowhere to be seen, and Sachi hadn't detected his chakra when she'd approached. She turned on the gas lamps one by one, starting with the two by the door, and then sat at her usual swivel chair by the desk. The chair squeaked, as always, when she turned in it. A few seconds passed, and her knee started bouncing. She forced it to stop, but as if acting on its own, it started again. To distract herself from the bouncing, she chewed on her left thumbnail, then the skin around her nail; then she moved on to her index finger. The clock above her desk read five fifty-seven.

She rotated her chair side to side, trying and failing to relax. Just when the anxious knot in her stomach threatened to make her seriously ill, she felt it—the seal around the basement shimmering to allow an entrance. She could detect the faint flicker of a now familiar chakra signature, fiery and dark, approach, and she sat up higher in her squeaky chair. When footsteps stopped before the door, Sachi kept her face stoic and her body just tense enough to be prepared without appearing alarmed. She remembered to take her fingers away from her mouth just as the door opened.

Itachi swept in completely silently; he even managed to open and close the door quietly. He supported his left arm in the front of his coat, using the coat almost like a sling. Sachi frowned. He hadn't mentioned any pain before. Had he gotten injured over the last few days? What if this were related to his other symptoms? She didn't voice these thoughts, however, choosing to focus on her immediate purpose.

"Right on time," she greeted, standing. "Show me your arm."

Itachi slipped his left arm back in its sleeve and extended his right arm. Sachi approached, pushed back his sleeve, and turned his arm to find the little dot she had marked the test site with. His skin looked exactly the same.

"Any pain? Swelling, itching?"

When Itachi said "no," Sachi let him go and explained that his skin test was negative for tuberculosis, which was good for him but left Sachi without a viable diagnosis, especially if his blood screenings were negative, as she suspected they would be. When she was done, she pointed to his left arm, unable to ignore it anymore.

"What happened to your left arm? I saw you cradling it when you walked in."

Itachi paused, touching his left shoulder reflexively. Sachi noted the movement. She recognized his contemplative expression—it was the look patients got when they considered how truthful to be.

"It's a pulled muscle," he finally said, "or tendon. It's not serious."

Sachi raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. "Yes, well, I can determine that. Please have a seat."

Following Sachi's gesture to the cot, Itachi complied and took off his coat. Deep down, beneath her sense of authority as a medical professional, Sachi knew she shouldn't press her luck with Itachi. He was being awfully meek and obedient for someone who could probably kill her before she even realized she was in danger, and she wasn't exactly displaying her warmest bedside manner with him. She inhaled slowly and faced him, trying to look genial. Or at least calm.

"How long as your shoulder been hurting?"

He looked pensive again. "A few weeks."

Sachi's gut told her that he was low-balling that time frame, as patients so often do, but she didn't challenge him.

"It doesn't hurt all the time," he continued. "It comes and goes."

Sachi nodded. "And when it hurts, how bad is the pain, on a scale from one to ten?"

Itachi was slow to answer, and his brows furrowed as he rolled his shoulder experimentally. "It varies. Sometimes a three, sometimes an eight or nine."

Sachi watched him intently before stepping forward, eyes on his shoulder. "May I?"

Itachi nodded, so she pressed her fingers to the top of his shoulder, running along his scapula and then sweeping over his clavicle. When asked, Itachi described the pain as sharp, sometimes shooting or burning down his upper arm. Sachi immediately suspected a nerve injury, especially when he added that the pain sometimes came with muscle weakness and difficulty using his arm. Limiting movement in his shoulder and arm was the only thing that alleviated pain during a flare-up. The symptoms were alarming, but what confused Sachi the most, besides her patient's failure to mention any of this three days ago, was that his pain was always brief, lasting no more than a few days at a time before a period of muscle weakness set in. He had no pain or difficulty turning his head, so the damaged nerve likely wasn't in his neck.

Sachi quickly grabbed her clipboard and scratch paper, making more detailed notes of all the new information; then, she had Itachi reach over his left hand over his head to touch his right shoulder blade and then reach for the same spot from below, watching for stiffness, range, and scapular winging. His muscles were strained though their range of motion was within normal limits, and he expressed pain with both movements. His scapula did wing out slightly. When he relaxed his arm again, his face tightened, and he used his right hand to support his arm against his chest. Then, he broke into a coughing fit, and Sachi was quick to fetch him a paper cup of water, which he took wordlessly. His cough was dry, not like he was trying to expel mucus, and once it passed, his breath was shallow and a little wheezy. Sachi chewed her lip and wrote down her observations before tucking her clipboard under her arm.

"I think it's your brachial plexus." She lightly prodded the juncture between Itachi's collar bone and his shoulder, pulling back when he winced. "Since I didn't detect any compressions before, I'm going to guess that the symptoms are due to inflammation or infection. Itachi-san, why didn't you tell me all this before? There's a good chance this is related to the infection in your chest."

"I apologize," he breathed, lowering his eyes. "I didn't think about it since I hadn't felt any pain or weakness in a while."

Sachi sighed. "You really should have sought treatment sooner. If your nerves have been injured, you could have permanent damage."

Itachi kept his gaze downward, so Sachi stopped herself from chastising him further. She finished writing her notes and set the clipboard on an empty chair as she tried to think of a way to end the appointment on a more uplifting note. She took a moment to study her patient again, taking in his posture and apparent well-being. He looked tired but alert, his back straight and breathing once again calm.

"How do you feel right now? Be honest," she said gently. Despite her better judgment, she relaxed her guard. She didn't care about Itachi the mercenary, the defector, or the clan-killer; for now, he was her patient, a sick eighteen-year-old boy.

Itachi eyed her, with what emotion Sachi couldn't tell. She struggled not to avert her gaze and swallowed thickly. Her abrupt warmth toward the boy vanished; suddenly, he was exceedingly threatening. Half of Sachi wished she knew what he was thinking, but the other half was too scared to ask. _How can someone so young be so creepy?_ she wondered, cringing internally. Sachi couldn't be careless around him, not even for a second. However, the tension lasted for only a moment; in the next second, Itachi seemed to relax, and Sachi felt her breathing become easier.

"I feel sick," he admitted. The simple honesty of his answer touched Sachi. If he were anyone else, she might have reached for his hand.

"Your blood tests won't be ready for another four days," she explained. "At that time, we'll meet back here and decide our next step. It may take a while, but we'll figure it out, and you'll get through this."

She offered Itachi a small smile. Itachi's dark eyes met hers, and he nodded once. In that instant, Sachi was filled with determination. She would help this person, for no other reason than the fact that he was asking her for help.

"Before we part ways—" her eyes shifted to Itachi's left shoulder—"let me examine your shoulder with chakra. I might be able to heal it a little, but I can't fully treat it until I know the underlying cause."

Itachi didn't refuse her offer.

* * *

It was dark when Itachi left Ishigakure. The stars shined brightly above him, the wilderness free of light pollution to mask their brilliance, and crickets chirped loudly all around. Kisame hadn't traveled far from where they'd parted, and since Itachi hadn't used much chakra in the past three days, Itachi would be able to catch up to his partner quickly. In his trouser pocket, a small bottle of pain medication poked his hip as he moved. Sachi had given him the pills, after fishing them out of a drawer in her desk, upon finishing her exam. With medical ninjutsu, she had determined that the nerves in his brachial plexus were, indeed, inflamed, and she had been able to calm the flare-up so that Itachi could now move his arm and shoulder freely without discomfort or weakness. However, she'd claimed the solution was only temporary—hence the pain medicine for when the inflammation inevitably returned.

 _"_ _You really should have sought treatment sooner. If your nerves have been injured, you could have permanent damage."_

Sachi's words floated into Itachi's mind, and Itachi struggled not to feel frustrated. Now he wished he'd treated his shoulder sooner; the idea of living with sometimes excruciating pain for the rest of his life seemed . . . bleak. Of course, it was no less than he deserved. Maybe karma, if such a thing existed, was catching up to him. Maybe it didn't matter. He didn't expect to live a long life, anyway—once Sasuke was strong enough, he would. . .

Itachi set his mouth in a grim line. He would have to survive until then. To do that, he would have to trust Sachi to do her job well. _Only four more days_ , he reassured himself. _Only four days, and then some answers_.


	5. Search for Answers

5\. Search for Answers

* * *

When morning came four days later, Sachi was asleep on a chair in the test lab with her head tilted back, mouth agape, and arms crossed over her chest. Reina Kobayashi, a civilian technician and medical assistant, shook her head at her coworker's disheveled form and placed a hand on Sachi's shoulder. Sachi sat up with a start, then winced when the muscles in her neck pinched. Rubbing her neck and shoulder, she cracked an eye open to look at the person who woke her.

"Reina," she mumbled. "What's up?"

Reina's eyebrows rose, amused, and she held up several sheets of paper stapled together. "Mr. Nakajima's test results are in. I assume these are what you stayed here all night for."

Eyes widening, Sachi tried to speak naturally as she took the paper. "Yeah. Thanks."

Toshio Nakajima was the alias Sachi had used to file Itachi's tests. She would have to delete that file before the end of the day to avoid rousing suspicions, and now that Reina knew about the tests, Sachi had even more work ahead of her to cover her tracks.

"Is the patient homeless or something?" Reina inquired. "It looks like you tested for everything."

Sachi's heart raced as she tried, in her sluggish, barely awake state, to think of believable explanations for her off-the-books testing. "Sorta. He's a traveler. Came in with a nasty cough and chest pain. Thought I'd check for all the usual stuff."

Reina nodded with a smile and began to speak again, but Sachi was already distracted. She flipped through the test results, a frown deepening as she saw negative screen after negative screen. Nothing. Itachi was clean. The only evidence that anything was wrong was his elevated white blood cell count, but Sachi had expected that to be high. His potassium was also a little low, but since it was still within the normal range, Sachi couldn't use it to support any diagnosis. Her mind reeled. If none of the most likely possibilities were causing his symptoms, then Sachi needed to reevaluate Itachi's case. And there was a good chance she was in over her head. She stood quickly, retrieving her pages of notes that she'd left face-down on the table. Itachi had had no signs of recent trauma, and he had claimed not to have been injured; however, given his lifestyle, poison, maybe weakened by something, maybe slow-acting, was the next most likely alternative. She needed to research.

Reina eyed her colleague worriedly. "Sachi? Are you okay?"

"Huh?" Sachi blinked up at Reina. "Yeah. Sorry, I have to get going."

Reina's brows furrowed as she watched Sachi dash out of the laboratory, too quick for Reina even to offer her help.

* * *

Itachi wove his way through the evening crowd in downtown Ishi, his bamboo hat tilted to cover his eyes. He moved calmly but deliberately, his mind set on his destination. Behind him came a long inhale followed by a low chuckle.

"It's been years since I last came to Ishigakure," hummed Kisame, "but the food smells as appetizing as ever. What do you say we grab a bite while we're here?"

Itachi's eyes slid to the side, focusing briefly on his peripheral view of his partner before shifting forward again. "You can do as you like. My appointment is at six, but you certainly don't have to be there."

Kisame grinned. "Heh, I can wait. I'm curious about this secret bunker you told me about."

Before long, Itachi approached the dilapidated hotel, and he paused briefly to look up at the shadowy ruins. The tallest remains of the building caught the last orange rays of sunlight; the rest was a sickly gray color.

"Oh? Is this the place? It really doesn't look like much," Kisame mused.

Itachi pressed onward, into the darkness of the ruins. Having Kisame near him this time made the visit feel almost like an assignment instead of a personal appointment. The feeling was both strange and familiar, a little like déjà vu. It wouldn't be so bad, he thought, to show Kisame the tea shop he'd discovered. After all, they'd shared many meals together so far, and if Itachi distracted himself from the fact that he couldn't really trust anyone in the Akatsuki, he found Kisame's company pleasant. They worked well together, at least.

This time, Itachi arrived before the medical-nin, so the room was dark when he entered. Remembering the way Madara had turned on the gas lamps throughout the room, Itachi lighted each lamp while Kisame ducked his head under the doorframe and observed his surroundings. The taller man laughed, and Itachi turned to see him place his hand on his hip, looking impressed.

"You were right!" Kisame grinned at him. "It certainly is cozier than most of our other hideouts."

A movement in the doorway behind Kisame caught Itachi's eye, and Kisame turned to follow his line of sight. Sachi stepped forward silently, wide eyes scanning up, up, up Kisame's long body.

"Hello," she greeted stiffly, brows furrowed.

"Hmm? Is this the medical-nin, Itachi-san?"

Kisame was facing Sachi, so Itachi couldn't see what expression he wore, but his voice lilted with a predatory amusement. Itachi could imagine the glint in his eyes. Belatedly, he realized that Sachi was carrying a small canvas backpack on her right shoulder.

"Yes," he answered, ignoring the temptation to stand between Sachi and Kisame. His eyes shifted to Sachi. "My partner, Kisame, wanted to see the hideout. He won't be staying."

Kisame made room for Sachi to step past him; as she moved, they both watched each other intently.

He spoke first. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, miss . . .?"

Sachi noticeably eyed Kisame's sharp teeth. "Sachi. Nice to meet you."

Kisame let out another short laugh, but Itachi wasn't sure what the other man found funny. Maybe Sachi's tense discomfort entertained him.

Tossing a smirk over his shoulder to Itachi, Kisame asked, "You'll find me when you're done?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, I'll see you—"

"Wait!"

Itachi and Kisame simultaneously turned their attention to Sachi, who'd interrupted.

"I could actually use your input, Kisame-san." She set her backpack on the desk behind her and from it extracted a black binder, opening it to a blank sheet of paper, and a pen.

"Oh?" Kisame glanced at Itachi, awaiting orders.

Itachi didn't get a chance to make a decision—Sachi was handing him a manila folder, which he took. Inside were several pages stapled together. It took Itachi a second to realize that they were his test results; the false name at the top had momentarily confused him.

"Yes," Sachi continued. Though Itachi was distracted by his attempt to understand his medical papers, he thought Sachi sounded urgent. "If you don't mind, I could use more information about Itachi-san's symptoms. I don't know much about Akatsuki's structure, but if you're Itachi-san's partner, then you're probably around him frequently, right?"

"That's right." Kisame's gaze continued to shift with uncertainty between Itachi and Sachi. Itachi was too preoccupied to focus on the conversation around him, and Sachi stared at Kisame with a stony determination.

"Can you recall when his symptoms began?"

"Hmm? Let's see. . ." Kisame tilted his chin up, mouth turning downward as he concentrated. Meanwhile, Itachi flipped to a new page. "I didn't really notice it as a persistent problem until later on, but I'd say he started coughing and slowing down about five months ago. It was before July."

"Was he injured at all in the two or three weeks before he got sick? Think hard."

Kisame hummed thoughtfully. "I can't say that he was. He's good at avoiding injury. He did wake up one morning complaining about his shoulder, though."

Sachi frowned, and her pen scribbled quickly on her paper. "You don't remember seeing anything like a small scratch? Maybe a rash? Or bumps like razor burn? Have you noticed him scratching or picking at anything on his skin? Or maybe in his hair?"

"No, sorry." Kisame shook his head. "He seemed to be fine until one day he wasn't. You sure are asking a lot of questions."

After finishing her writing, Sachi read over her notes quickly. Her right hand went automatically to her lips, and she chewed her thumbnail. Noticing the silence, Itachi looked up from his own reading and met Kisame's questioning eyes.

"Did he ever seem delirious or feverish?"

Kisame now scowled at her, vexed at being ignored. "No. He's been the same, except the coughing and fatigue."

Another long pause followed, and Itachi decided to interject. "Is that all?"

Sachi seemed to remember herself and looked at Kisame again. "Thank you, Kisame-san. You're free to go."

Kisame's eyes narrowed as he cast a slow stare at Sachi and then his partner. When Itachi nodded at him, Kisame relented. "Sure. I'll see you later, then, Itachi-san."

Kisame closed the door behind him, but Sachi waited until she felt his presence leave the basement through the seal before speaking. Feeling Itachi's stare, she faced him.

"Your test results are all negative. The only abnormality is your elevated blood cell count, but since I already suspected an infection, that's no surprise."

Itachi frowned, perplexed. "All right."

"If you don't have anything I tested you for, I have to start from the beginning again," she admitted, biting her cheek in frustration. "So I considered poisons, but since you report having no injuries and your partner hasn't seen anything unusual. . . Have you had an upset stomach at all? Any dizziness or pain or nausea?"

Itachi thought carefully, recalling everything he could from the past five months. He could see now why Sachi had been so terse with Kisame; if she thought Itachi had been poisoned, then time was critical. Itachi couldn't think of any poison that would take so long to affect him, though.

In the end, he shook his head. "No. By now, I've told you everything."

Sachi watched his face as he spoke, sticking her pen between her teeth. After a moment, she sighed and sank into her chair, which squeaked from her weight, and peered blankly at the wall. She seemed to be deep in thought. Fighting his own urge to sigh, Itachi sat on the couch across from her. Disappointment welled in his chest and weighed on his aching shoulder. Could this woman help him after all? What were his options after this?

"I doubt it's poison," Sachi murmured, more to herself than to Itachi. She seemed to be thinking aloud, but Itachi hung onto every word nonetheless. "It's been too long for anything to have absorbed through the skin, and anything ingested wouldn't explain the inflammation in your shoulder."

After another short pause, her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Inflammation. White blood cells. But no environmental infection."

Suddenly, her gaze snapped up to his face, and she sat up higher. "Can I listen to your lungs again?"

Itachi didn't question her; he wordlessly removed his coat. Before Sachi put her stethoscope to his chest, she explained that she was going to listen again for any signs of pneumonia or arrhythmia and then instructed him to breathe deeply through his nose. The next few seconds were silent except for Itachi's breathing. He winced, feeling a sharp tightness in his chest as he inhaled, and he struggled to suppress his cough until Sachi pulled away. When she looked at him again, her jaw was set firmly, and Itachi hoped that she had another hypothesis.

"It's definitely not pneumonia," she confirmed. "And your heartbeat is fine. Since nothing else makes sense right now, I think whatever you have is autoimmune."

"Autoimmune?" Itachi had no idea if such a diagnosis were better or worse than an ordinary infection.

Sachi nodded and returned to her backpack, which was still sitting open on the desk. "It means your body is attack its own cells, mistaking them as foreign. Treatment starts with corticosteroids."

Itachi released a slow breath. The diagnosis didn't seem so bad, and if the treatment were simple, then he should be able to recover quickly. After a moment of rustling in the bag, Sachi turned around with her binder again in her hand. She pulled out another set of stapled pages and handed it to him. Itachi kept his eyes on the medical-nin.

"Steroids are effective, but their side-effects are serious. This is some basic information about steroid therapy, so you can go over it later." Sachi tugged her swivel chair to Itachi and sat directly across from him. "They suppress the immune system, which is over-active right now. I need to do more tests to confirm how exactly your body is being affected, but your symptoms fit. Autoimmune diseases cause inflammation and pain as well as a general feeling of sickness and fatigue or weakness. It explains both your—"

Sachi halted, a perturbed expression flashing across her face as her mouth fell open. "What happened to your eye?"

Itachi blinked, suddenly alarmed. "What?"

"Your right eye—it's crazy irritated." Sachi leaned closer to his face, glaring at his eye.

A pit of unease settled in Itachi's gut, and his shoulders tensed. Unbidden, he recalled Shisui's face, bloodied and missing one eye. This close. Danzō had to have been this close to Shisui to have taken that eye. Itachi swallowed the bitter memory, suppressing a shudder, and focused on the present. He'd used Amaterasu that morning as well as the night before. He and Kisame had run into some complications during their latest assignment.

"It's normal," he dismissed.

Sachi stared at him incredulously. "You more than likely have an inflammatory disease. This is probably related. In fact, I remember thinking the first time I saw you that your eyes were a little bloodshot."

Itachi shook his head. "This is different. It has been going on for much longer."

"Itachi-san." The severity in Sachi's tone made Itachi pause. "Inflammatory conditions can go on for a long time without detection. There is a very good chance the thing affecting your eye is connected to your other inflamed areas. If it's been going on longer than the other symptoms, it might even be the starting point."

Itachi closed his eyes, pushing a flash of impatience out with a slow breath, before he looked at Sachi again. "It's the sharingan. The increased chakra puts strain on the eyes. That's all."

"Has this level of irritation happened to other sharingan users?" Sachi pressed.

Itachi faltered. He couldn't think of any others, but there also wasn't an abundance of information about the Mangekyō sharingan.

"Not to my knowledge," he admitted.

"Hmm. Not to mine, either." Sachi didn't say more. Instead, she pushed her wheeled chair to her desk and jotted more notes down in her binder.

"In any case," she announced, "I want to start you on steroids as soon as possible. That should take care of all the inflammation. There are some important side-effects to this treatment, though. As I said earlier, steroids suppress the immune system. A suppressed immune system leaves you much more vulnerable to infection than normal, so your body won't be able to fight off common germs as efficiently. That means that a simple cold could quickly become pneumonia; an infected scratch could rapidly develop into sepsis."

"How do I prevent that?" Itachi asked, relieved to move the conversation away from his eyes.

Sachi crossed her legs and wrapped her hands around her top knee. "I can give you antibiotics and vitamins to help prevent infection. However, I really recommend taking time off if you can, at least for the initial treatment."

"That might not be possible."

"Say you're injured. Your boss can't make you do anything if you're physically incapable. I want to monitor the first few doses as closely as possible to make sure they're effective."

Itachi's brows rose. "You want me to stay here? For how long?"

"Well, I need to actually get my hands on the medications after the tests finish. All that will take me . . . probably two weeks." Sachi grimaced. Stealing prescription medication would be a pain, but she hated the idea of delaying Itachi's treatment. "At least ten days. After that, I'll start the initial treatment, and I'd want to monitor you for forty-eight hours. If the treatment goes well, I can send you off with a supply. But you'll have to come back here every few weeks for refills."

"For how long?"

Sachi hesitated briefly. "That will depend on what exactly you have. I'm going to take another blood sample to narrow down the possibilities as much as I can. I'd also like a urine sample. For any autoimmune condition, though . . . treatment is usually long term. Expect at least four months."

Itachi nodded heavily. The process sounded inconvenient, but if it meant resolving his illness and pain, he would do it. He would do whatever he had to.


	6. To Find and To Lose

6\. To Find and To Lose

* * *

Itachi had thought getting poked and prodded by Sachi while he was naked was uncomfortable. That awkwardness, however, paled in comparison to handing her a clear plastic cup half full of his urine. He kept his gaze firmly away from her as she took the cup, sealed it in a plastic bag, and stored it along with two vials of his blood in a scroll, which she tucked into her backpack. Naturally, Sachi had seemed unaffected. She probably took such samples every day. Itachi understood this and tried to feel less self-conscious, but he was still . . . disgusted. Thankfully, he was able to put it out of his mind when Sachi turned to him again with another medication bottle.

"Have you been taking your pain medicine?" she questioned.

"Yes." Itachi reached into his pocket after he slid his coat back on. "I ran out today."

Sachi nodded and extended her hand. Itachi traded her his empty bottle for the new, larger one.

"These are stronger NSAIDs," she stated. "They might help reduce some of the inflammation in your arm and shoulder, but they won't do the job like corticosteroids. Take no more than three a day. They should last you two weeks."

Itachi glimpsed at the bottle, catching a long scientific name on the label, before pocketing it. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Sachi smiled weakly. "Is there anything else you want to go over? Do you have any questions?"

Itachi shook his head. "Can you do what you did before? To my shoulder?"

"The healing jutsu? Yeah, no problem. How long did it last?" Sachi waited for Itachi to sit down again before going to his side.

"Two days. The pain has already subsided, but the weakness has set in." Pain was something Itachi could handle. He wasn't injured often, but as a shinobi, he expected a certain degree of it. He knew how to work through pain. Muscle weakness, however, was much more frustrating. Itachi hated being unable to move his arm properly; it made him vulnerable.

Sachi nodded and hovered her hands over the top of his shoulder and his collarbone. Her hands glowed a bluish green color with her medical ninjutsu, and a soothing warmth flowed deep into Itachi's shoulder. When he felt Sachi's chakra in his arm, he realized that parts of his muscles had been numb; they seemed to wake up suddenly, and his skin prickled as if he'd slept on his arm. Itachi couldn't help but feel dismayed. When had his health become so poor? The decline seemed to have happened both very rapidly and extremely slowly, and Itachi had barely noticed it happening. He'd simply become accustomed to feeling bad. Now he had to depend on a dubious stranger—and, much worse, Madara—for aid. Itachi was also beginning to wonder about the likelihood of his making a full recovery.

"The blood tests could take up to another week to finish processing, especially if the lab is busy." Sachi's voice abruptly pulled Itachi from his brooding, and his eyes shifted to her, silently requesting her to continue. "How do I contact you about the results?"

Itachi needed only a split second to consider his answer. "I'll leave you one of my crows. That's the safest way."

"You summon crows?" Sachi blurted, face flushing slightly when she caught her incredulous tone. Itachi merely raised a brow.

"Cool, yeah, that works for me." She pretended not to notice Itachi's odd stare and, once her jutsu ended, dropped her hands. "You're free to go. I'll be in touch."

* * *

Late that night, Sachi walked home feeling like she was being watched. Ever since Itachi had revealed that he had a contract with crows, Sachi couldn't help but wonder if all the birds in town might somehow be spying for him. She took all the roundabout turns she could think of to her neighborhood, but instead of feeling safer, she grew increasingly frustrated. Crows were everywhere in Ishi—around all the dumpsters, on electric lines, along the buildings, in the trees. All those beady eyes hidden in inky feathers following her as she passed. Sachi thought she might go mad trying to evade all of them, and in the end, she knew she failed to avoid being seen.

After taking an excessively long and hot bath, trying to scrub clean the image of dark eyes peering straight into hers, Sachi sat in bed with a copy of Kirigakure's Bingo Book propped against her knees. The books from Konoha, Suna, and Ishi lay on her nightstand. She flipped the pages until she found the entry she sought: Kisame Hoshigaki.

After taking an excessively long and hot bath, trying to scrub clean the feeling of dark eyes peering straight into her soul, Sachi sat in bed with a copy of Kirigakure's Bingo Book propped against her knees. The books from Konoha, Suna, Iwa and Ishi lay on her nightstand. She flipped the pages until she found the entry she sought: Kisame Hoshigaki.

 _So he is the one_ , she thought. He certainly had a distinctive face; the moment she saw him, she thought she'd recognized him. The large weapon, which must have been the infamous Samehada, on his back was another giveaway. And, holy shit, the man was intimidating—he had the largest, densest chakra Sachi had ever felt. And besides being an expert swordsman, Kisame was a master of water style. Sachi's own water style jutsu probably would be useless against him, and the fact that his sword was rumored to absorb chakra made him even more formidable. This was Itachi Uchiha's partner.

Sachi rubbed her temples, sighing loudly. These men could very quickly overwhelm her if they decided to turn on her. And she was sure they both had abilities she didn't know about. How was she supposed to prepare a contingency plan with the odds stacked so high against her?

First, she had to determine how her skills measured up to those of each man and figure out which was more of a threat to her. Kisame was more physically imposing than Itachi, but Itachi was once an Anbu agent and so would also have high marks in physical and melee techniques. Shurikenjutsu was even listed as one of his specialties along with fire style jutsu and genjutsu. And, of course, Sachi couldn't underestimate the sharingan. As a medic, Sachi was trained in breaking genjutsu; she could easily disrupt her own chakra flow as well as the chakra of her comrades in confrontations with genjutsu users. However, she was proficient only up to B-rank techniques and, on first attempts, had a success rate of about sixty-five percent against A-rank genjutsu. She could usually break A-rank illusions on a second attempt, but if Itachi were her opponent, she knew she'd need precise timing. She'd never been up against an S-rank genjutsu specialist.

Sachi's favored nature transformation was earth, which was strong against water. If her earth techniques were stable enough, she could probably outlast Kisame's water attacks, especially if she manipulated already-available earth instead of trying to transform her chakra directly. An exceptional earth barrier could also withstand fire attacks, up to a point; another option was simply to hide underground or manipulate the terrain enough to evade an attack. She was comfortable with kunai, but she was no weapons expert, and she probably couldn't go toe-to-toe against a swordsman of Kisame's caliber.

Sachi shook her hair with her hands and groaned in frustration. She was fucked. Thoroughly fucked. Her only real option if push came to shove was to run, as fast and far as she could. She hoped she wouldn't need to. However, she didn't want to trust to hope; she wanted to be more prepared, enough to stand a chance against at least one of the Akatsuki duo. She needed to get back on a more intensive training regimen. Since she hadn't been expected to go on the field for nearly five years now, her body had softened somewhat, but it was now time to get back in shape.

With another sigh, Sachi placed the Bingo Book on top of the others and turned off her bedside lamp. She lay on her back a long while, her mind still active. Nerve pain, bloodshot eye, chest pain, shortness of breath, coughing, hemoptysis. Itachi's symptoms cycled in her head over and over. On the surface, they appeared only distantly related, but Sachi was sure they were connected. Something autoimmune could connect them. In the morning, she would research autoimmune disorders to determine which one best described Itachi's case. She remembered the inflammation deep in his lungs, the redness of his right eye, and inflammation around his shoulder. During her second healing session, she had pushed her chakra a little deeper into Itachi's muscles and nerves, hoping not only for the healing effects to last longer but also to see where exactly the inflammation was coming from.

It was coming from his blood vessels, she'd found. Of course, Sachi wasn't entirely certain yet; however, she had a hunch, and her hunches rarely failed her. She was keeping Itachi's samples stored safely in her sealing scroll for now; once she determined how to test for and treat autoimmune vasculitis, if such a thing existed, properly, she would take them to the lab. Of course, figuring out a treatment plan would be hard. She couldn't exactly request a consultation for a case that didn't exist.

The competitive side of her wanted to be right; solving Itachi's case would look impressive on her record, if only it were an official case. Vasculitis _would_ explain the weird splotches, what had initially seemed like blockages, that she'd detected in his lungs. She wasn't entirely sure how vasculitis affected Itachi's brachial nerves, but Sachi suspected that the inflamed vessels constricted blood flow to the nerves or otherwise compressed the nerves, causing pain, numbness, and weakness in the shoulder and arm. Because Itachi's condition was clearly affecting multiple organs, treating it without complications would probably be difficult. Sachi's compassionate nature wished Itachi had something simpler to manage. She was especially worried about his kidneys. Autoimmune diseases often slowed or even shut down kidney function, and if that happened to Itachi, he wouldn't have many options since he was a missing-nin.

* * *

Four days later, Sachi walked home from work still keenly aware of the crows around her. She had just entered the street where her apartment building was located when she spotted a familiar face. He was around the same height as her, she being tall for a woman and he being a little short for a man, and he had black, spiky hair and fair skin with a small mole above his left eyebrow. He wore a jōnin vest of dark sienna, the standard for Ishigakure. _Naoki. . ._ Sachi's face brightened upon seeing her friend, who must have just returned from a mission. And since he was in Sachi's neighborhood, he probably intended to visit her. Sachi would have called out to him, but she noticed that he was speaking to a man she didn't recognize. She frowned. Always suspicious of unfamiliar faces, Sachi activated her chakra in sensory mode. The stranger's chakra wasn't engaged; in fact, it was too undeveloped for the person even to use jutsu. Sachi relaxed. _Just a civilian_.

When Naoki and the stranger began to part ways, Sachi smiled again and trotted to her friend, her feet silent on the pavement and her presence thoroughly suppressed. Her footsteps fell in line with his, and when she was right behind him, she opened her mouth.

"You're in big trouble, you know," she spoke lowly.

Naoki whirled around to face her, his eyes wide and right hand already in his weapons pouch. Then, his eyes narrowed in annoyance, and, faster than Sachi could blink, he threw a shuriken at her. Sachi instinctively turned her body, avoiding the projectile.

Naoki stomped past Sachi, not looking at her, to pluck his shuriken out of a wall. "Sachi, I fucking hate you, and I hope you die!"

Sachi smirked playfully and crossed her arms. "Oh, please, Naoki. You know you wouldn't have a life without me."

Naoki glared at her, but the edges of a smile soon began to break through his irritability. "All right, you got me. Where've you been? I tried to see you yesterday, but you weren't around."

"Ah, sorry. I've been working extra hours lately." Sachi's thoughts began to race. Should she tell Naoki about Itachi's case? How much information could she trust him with? What would he do if she told him? On the surface, however, she continued to smile comfortably. "I was wondering when you'd come by. Your last mission took ages."

They were walking now, side by side, to Sachi's apartment. Naoki chatted amiably about his mission, relaying any details that weren't official secrets, and they both complained about how tired they were from their respective duties. When they were in Sachi's home, they each prepared a bowl of canned soup and sat on the floor at Sachi's small living room table.

"Let's play Would You Rather," Sachi suggested.

Naoki smiled. "You wanna go first?"

"Just a sec." Sachi left Naoki at the table for a moment to go to her bedroom. She returned to the table with Ishigakure's official Bingo Book, which listed many of the missing-nin in the Big Five's books. Naoki's brows raised when she placed the book between them.

"You wanna go there, huh?"

"Let's be _bad_ ," Sachi joked, flipping her hand downward.

They often played this game of hypothetical enemies. Normally, they had to choose between two famous ninjas, usually from other lands, to fight and explain their choices. It was good entertainment, especially when they set each other up with opponents who clearly out-ranked them, and it was a lighthearted way to tease each other. However, it was also a good exercise in strategy. The game forced them to think honestly about their respective strengths and weaknesses and about ways to approach enemies with different abilities. Today, Sachi already had a set of opponents in mind.

"Would you rather," she began, folding her hands on the table, "fight Kisame Hoshigaki or Itachi Uchiha?"

Naoki frowned, slurping from his spoon. "Who?"

"Kisame Ho—"

"No," Naoki interrupted, "the other one."

"Itachi Uchiha? Genius kid from Konoha who, like, murdered a bunch of people in one night and then defected. He's in the book."

Naoki opened the Bingo Book, searching for Itachi's page. "A genius, huh? He might be a good match for me, since I'm a genius myself."

"Right," Sachi said flatly. "Well, I don't think it'd be a battle of wits. You can't even win against me half the time."

"That doesn't mean anything!" Naoki wailed, scrunching up his nose. "We've been training together for _years_ , and—what the hell? _Genjutsu_? _Hell_ naw!"

Sachi laughed. "That's what I'm saying! One-on-one, you can't do shit against sharingan."

"Oh, shit! This is the guy who killed off the Uchiha clan back then!" Naoki realized, holding the book closer to his face. "Damn, look at that baby face. This says he was only fourteen at the time."

"He was a full-fledged shinobi and part of Konoha's black ops team," Sachi reminded him. "So again: would you rather fight him or Kisame?"

Naoki put his hand on his chin and hummed thoughtfully; then, he was silent for a long moment as he weighed his options. Sachi imagined steam coming out of his ears from thinking too hard, and she snickered quietly. When Naoki set the book on the table and crossed his arms, Sachi knew he was coming closer to an answer.

"I wouldn't want to go up against Kisame," he divulged. "The fact that he absorbs chakra is too much of a hassle. The sharingan is tricky, too, but as long as I don't make eye-contact, I should be all right."

Sachi raised a brow. "You really think you can avoid eye-contact during a battle? When you'll both be moving quickly and he'll probably pressure you into looking straight at him?"

Naoki shrugged. "I don't think he'd corner me. My taijutsu is _excellent_."

"All right," Sachi huffed, eyes narrowing. "Let's say you somehow manage not to look him in the eye at all, even though he's also skilled at hand-to-hand combat and shuriken. The sharingan doesn't just cast genjutsu—it's analytical. It can see chakra through even dust and mist, _and_ it can read and predict physical movements. That means he'll be able to anticipate your every move and know how to counter. _That means he'll be able to read your hand signs._ And I'm pretty sure you are not fast enough to confuse the sharingan. What then?"

Naoki grinned. "Earth style. I'll create mud walls or go underground."

"You really think it'll be that simple? Your earth release is worse than mine."

Sachi wanted to exclaim, _This isn't a game!_ But, to Naoki, it was. In theory, his answer was acceptable, but Sachi couldn't help but wonder if such a plan would work in a real match against Itachi. Against anyone with sharingan, really. Instead of feeling relieved or inspired by Naoki, she felt only more anxious.

Naoki waved his hand flippantly. "I mean, in real life, things'll probably be a lot faster and more intense, but that's about how it'd go down. Plus, if I can trap him in an earth seal, he'll be done."

"Again, _how_ will you do that without him analyzing your hand signs and evading?"

"Eh." He shrugged again. "Where there's a will, there's a way."

Sachi's nostrils flared. "No! You can't just _Naoki_ your way through everything. How can you be a _genius_ if all you do is go into situations recklessly?"

Naoki head tipped back as he laughed boisterously. "Hey, man, I've been told my fiery spirit is indomitable. Plus, geniuses are able to be flexible and make plans on the spot according to their situation. And I _am_ a genius—an important one. Just the other day, someone called me Satō- _san_."

"Satō-san?" Sachi snorted, and her lips curled in an amused smirk. "Who's that?"

"Honestly, I had the same reaction. This lady was like, 'I'm looking for Satō-san,' and I was like, 'Uhhhhhh, I don't know who that is. Ask Mayu.' Shun looked at me like I was crazy and went, 'Um, _that's you_ , stupid.' And then it clicked, and I was like 'Oh, yeah. . . Just call me Naoki.'"

Sachi's jaw dropped. "You know, for a supposed genius, you're the biggest idiot I know. How do you not know your own name?"

"I'm not used to it! Everyone just calls me Naoki."

"Yeah." Sachi nodded, holding her chin. "I can't imagine you as a Satō-san. It's so formal."

"Right? Anyway—" he tapped the Bingo Book and waggled his eyebrows—"who would you fight?"

Sachi waited for him to specify her opponents, but when he didn't, she asked, "My options?"

"Oh, same ones."

"Wh—you can't do that!"

"Why not? They're interesting to compare."

"That's just—it's not—it violates the _spirit_ of the game." Sachi pouted. What was the point of getting Naoki's perspective, however indirectly, if he was just going to turn the scenario back on her?

"But not the rules." Naoki smirked. "Choose!"

"No. You can pick new ones, or you can get out of my house."

"You know, I bet you could take on Itachi. You're good against genjutsu." Naoki winked.

"Don't you do that!" Sachi cried. "Don't you put that evil on me! Pick someone else."

"Oh, and it's okay for _me_ to go against him?"

Sachi glanced at her fingernails, scraping a jagged edge along her thumb before biting the uneven nail.

Naoki sighed. "You know, one of these days, I'm going to win an argument against you."

"Yeah, maybe. Get to pickin'."

* * *

 **Author's note:** I forgot to update on Sunday! Lol, guess I'm not used to having an upload schedule. I also just noticed that I can see a traffic graph of views, and it looks like I have a few consistent readers; a couple of you even favorited _The Road_. Thank you, everyone, for giving this story a glance. I hope you enjoy.


	7. Distrust Even the Pale Moon

7\. Distrust Even the Pale Moon

* * *

Sachi stared, brows furrowed and lips pursed in consternation, at Itachi's blood test results. They were telling her something, but her knowledge of autoimmune diseases wasn't specialized enough to remember how to interpret the screens. Why couldn't blood be as simple to read as urine? Sachi had been able to perform the urinalysis quickly with a dipstick, but the results had proved worrisome. The test had found microscopic hematuria—blood in the urine that was invisible to the human eye. In addition, the one of the blood tests now showed slightly elevated creatinine levels in Itachi's serum. His kidneys were beginning to fail.

Before she had run the bloods tests, Sachi had had to scour the hospital's resources on autoimmune diseases to get an idea of what to expect, but there were too many disorders that could show in too many varying ways for her to understand Itachi's results confidently, especially after a few days had passed. At least, she wasn't confident on her own. But that was what books were for if expert help wasn't available. She sat now at a rectangular table in an empty beige conference room, two thick books and three charts lying before her.

She turned now to the textbooks and opened one, her finger tracing the lines that explained ALT and AST levels. Sachi looked at Itachi's screen again and circled corresponding results in red and made notes in her black binder. These letters were enzymes, if Sachi understood correctly, that marked muscular inflammation, and according to the book, Itachi's levels were normal. The next pages of Itachi's results contained a baffling series of letters and numbers: ANA, ANCA, PR3, MPO, IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α. Sachi wanted to tear her hair out.

At that moment, a knock on the door distracted Sachi, and she turned to face the entrant. Reina's kind smile met her gaze, and the medical assistant stepped in.

"Sorry," Sachi spoke. "Is there another room you can use? I'm working on something."

"Oh, I don't need it," Reina reassured. "I saw you in the window, and I wanted to check on you. You've been so preoccupied lately. Is it Nakajima-san?"

"Who?" Sachi mentally kicked herself as she remembered the alias she'd used for Itachi's case. "Oh, yeah. I ran more blood tests, but I don't really understand the results since I don't know much about autoimmune diseases."

Reina frowned and approached the table, glancing over the scattered books and papers. "Who is his main provider?"

"Well. . . I am," Sachi mumbled. "He doesn't have insurance, so I don't want to involve more expensive specialists if I can avoid it. But his case has gotten a lot more complicated."

"I'll say!" Reina pushed aside one of the test result forms with her fingertips, and Sachi tried to calm her racing heartbeat as her colleague peered at the documents. "You think it's autoimmune, huh?"

"Y-yeah." Sachi's heart was going to explode any minute, she could tell. "Can you read these?"

"Well, sure. I work in mostly the cancer ward, and we test for a lot of these conditions as differential diagnoses."

"That's right! Then, can you help me?" Hope blossomed on Sachi's face.

Reina laughed. "Of course! I can't say no to a cute face like that."

"Ah, thank you! I'm saved." Sachi could have wept. Reina was really an angel sent in her time of need. "Just . . . keep this between us. Please."

The corners of Reina's eyes crinkled with her next smile, serene and sweet, and she sat down next to Sachi before gathering Itachi's test results. Sachi sat up straighter and watched Reina's face.

"I understand ALT and AST refer to myositis and myopathies, and it looks like this guy—Nakajima-san—doesn't have either condition. Right?"

Reina nodded. "Mm-hmm. His muscle enzymes are normal."

"Okay, but what are IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-alpha? Proteins?"

"That's right," Reina confirmed. "Proteins in the serum. They're inflammatory markers as well. The liver makes them in response to a lot of infections, autoimmune diseases, and cancers. Anything that causes chronic inflammation. And your patient does have elevated serum proteins. The ANA, anti-nuclear antibody, in his serum definitely points to autoimmune. Oh. . ."

"What? What is it?" Sachi leaned over Reina's shoulder to see what she saw.

"He's MPO-ANCA positive. He definitely has a type of vasculitis."

Sachi had to stuff down the smugness that nearly flashed across her face. She had been right about Itachi's diagnosis, and being right was always satisfying; however, Reina's worried expression sobered her.

"He's uninsured, right? How will he cover treatment?" Reina turned to her.

Sachi lowered her eyes. _How, indeed?_ she thought bitterly. "I don't know. I'll have to talk to him about the results first. We'll take it from there."

Reina's smile was smaller now and sympathetic. "Let's go get some coffee. Take a break."

Sachi returned the smile weakly. "Sure. Go ahead. I'll meet you in the break room."

Reina's hand touched Sachi's shoulder and gave it a little squeeze; then, Reina was gone. Sachi's thoughts were flying. She needed to get those steroids to control Itachi's inflammation as soon as possible. It would be easy enough to figure out which ones to use for his particular condition. But how would she get them? When could she do it? _How_?

Her gaze returned to the ANA and ANCA screen results. _Anti-nuclear antibody and . . ._ She held the paper closer to read the small print. _Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody_. Specifically, Itachi had MPO ANCA in his blood according to Reina. Sachi found all the little abbreviations frustrating, but she didn't dwell on them; the full-length words were too hard to memorize and weren't necessary to her understanding of Itachi's treatment. The fact that MPO was short for _myeloperoxidase_ would mean nothing to a patient, even one who was supposed to be highly intelligent like Itachi.

Sachi didn't know much about the different types of vasculitis, but she would have to find out quickly. She sighed heavily. _No matter how much closer I get_ , she contemplated dismally, _the end keeps getting farther away_. She had the feeling that a long journey was ahead of her. That was, if Itachi, Kisame, or Madara, or any other damn Akatsuki member didn't kill her any time soon.

Sachi peeked over her shoulder to the window that showed the hallway. No one was around. Then, slowly, she looked to the window on the opposite side of the room, the one facing outside. The back of Sachi's neck prickled. A large black crow sat on the windowsill and stared straight back at her, its little head cocking to one side and its gaze alert.

* * *

The grasslands between Iwagakure and Kusagakure were wet and marshy this time of year, but Itachi and Kisame followed a trusty path through the expansive green fields lined by distant mountains, and they were lucky to have had three days of sunshine in a row. Now, the air was mild and humid, and a cool east wind swept through the plains and rustled two black and red coats. A crow cawed, and Itachi turned his head toward the sound, squinting against the morning sun. He held his straw hat in place with one hand so that the wind wouldn't tip it off his head. Kisame didn't seem to notice until the bird glided down to perch on Itachi's arm, at which point he stopped and watched his partner curiously. Itachi took a small roll of paper from the crow's beak, quietly thanked the bird, and opened the paper as the crow flapped away. It flew in the direction of the waning gibbous moon, which hung high and dim opposite the sun.

 _Results in: auto. yes, vasculitis. Come in a week or ASAP for treatment plan._

Itachi stared at the note a moment longer. Sachi's handwriting looked slow and deliberate though a little cramped, especially in the word "vasculitis." With his sharingan, he could easily memorize Sachi's writing pattern. Some important letters, such as _b_ , _d_ , and _g_ , were missing from this sample, but it was enough for Itachi to be able to tell a forgery from an authentic note from her in the future, so he committed it to memory. Thinking now about the actual message, he guessed that "auto. yes" meant that his illness was confirmed to be autoimmune. In a way, it was good news since he could finally work on treating his symptoms, but Itachi didn't like it. He had read and reread the information Sachi had given him about autoimmune diseases, and the prognosis wasn't stellar. Although many patients made full recoveries from autoimmune diseases, the symptoms had to be diagnosed early for the best results; plus, even in the best cases, relapses were somewhat common. So even after Itachi was healed, he would have to check in with a doctor or medic, probably Sachi, at least once a year to monitor his health.

After affording Itachi a generous moment of stillness, Kisame grew too curious not to speak up. "News? From the medic in Ishi?"

Itachi tucked the slip of paper into his coat. He considered lying or even ignoring the question entirely, but since Kisame already knew about Sachi, Itachi didn't think it necessary to hide the truth completely.

"Yes. After this assignment, I'll have to go back for a few days." He walked as he spoke, and when he caught up to Kisame, the taller man shortened his stride to walk alongside him.

"And if Leader reassigns us?" Kisame asked, keeping his eyes forward.

"I'll be indisposed. Injured," answered Itachi.

Kisame chuckled. "Works for me. I wouldn't mind taking a short break. However, about that medic. . . Is she really trustworthy?"

Itachi didn't answer. He didn't know how to.

"Well, even if she isn't," Kisame continued, unperturbed by Itachi's reticence, "she shouldn't be too much to handle. Samehada wasn't interested in her, so I doubt she'd be a tasty opponent."

Itachi glanced at the broadsword strapped to Kisame's back. Samehada absorbed, or rather, consumed, chakra. Itachi had heard Kisame describe how the sword seemed to prefer certain flavors of chakra, but Itachi didn't know what chakra characteristics determined the flavor. Was it the chakra size? Kisame himself had extremely large chakra reserves, which was probably why Samehada was loyal to him in the first place. Also, Kisame, unlike Itachi, enjoyed fighting, especially when it was challenging or interesting, and Samehada apparently felt the same way. Itachi, however, thought Kisame was underestimating Sachi. After what Madara had said about her, Itachi was convinced the medic was too mysterious to handle lightly.

"However, she did get on my nerves just a bit," Kisame growled. "Maybe we ought to cut her down a peg."

"That isn't necessary," declared Itachi. "As you said, she shouldn't be difficult to handle. But we still shouldn't underestimate her."

Kisame hummed thoughtfully. "As you wish, Itachi-san."

Kisame's right hand closed around Samehada's hilt, his fingers tracing the small skull at the base. Since Itachi detected no malice from Kisame, he interpreted the gesture as one of habit or as a form of self-soothing. He turned his eyes toward the moon again, just ahead of him.

* * *

Sachi was sweating as she marched through the hallway at work, her eyes on the exit. Her backpack felt much heavier than it should have, and each casual glance toward her made her adrenaline rush. She struggled to hear what others were saying because her pulse pounded in her ears so loudly. However, she had to stay calm. She had to avoid suspicions. She'd already clocked out, so if she could get out of the hospital without being stopped, she'd be able to make it to the Akatsuki hideout. For now. At some point, a staff member would notice the hospital's short supply of high-dose corticosteroids and mycophenolate mofetil, and an investigation would begin. But not now. Hopefully, not for a while.

Sachi had taken great pains to steal the medications and administrative tools very gradually over the past eight days. And she had been careful in selecting which medications to take, even going as far as getting Reina to get suggestions from her supervisor and the other staff in her department. Since Reina was a medical assistant, her asking questions wouldn't have looked suspicious. Or so Sachi hoped. Even if Reina ended up getting in trouble later down the road for helping her, though, Sachi was still glad she had sought Reina's advice. Thanks to the information Reina had gathered, Sachi was able to choose a combination of medicines that had a lower chance of toxicity—apparently, in addition to the risks of suppressing the immune system, the treatments for ANCA-associated vasculitis tended to cause a host of potentially dangerous side effects. Sachi would have to monitor Itachi's intake carefully.

Unfortunately, she was unable to say with certainty which form of vasculitis Itachi had. Thanks to Itachi's ANCA reading, she was able to narrow the possible diagnoses to two: microscopic polyangiitis, MPA, or granulomatosis with polyangiitis, GPA. She would need a biopsy of Itachi's lungs, which seemed to be the most affected organ, to determine which of the two conditions he had; however, that wasn't an option since she didn't have access to the resources in this situation. Luckily, the treatments for both conditions were very similar, if not identical in some cases, so Sachi hoped that it wouldn't matter which he had, especially since Itachi's disease still had only mild renal involvement.

With a final push, Sachi was through the doors, and she gasped loudly. Two crows startled, flapping their wings in the patch of grass to her right. She'd made it! Breathing a short sigh of relief, Sachi smiled triumphantly and stretched her arms above her head before walking down the path to her left. All that was left to do now was take the supplies to the hideout and set up, preferably before Itachi arrived. However, she was in no rush. Her shoulders and chest ached from the stress of sneaking through the hospital, and she wanted to catch her breath before she started her work with Itachi.

She was a little more than halfway to the old hotel she noticed Naoki on the other side of the street. He dressed casually, probably on his way to the shops or to eat. Her heart twisted in guilt as she ducked her head and sped past him. She adored her friend and was always in the mood to chat with him, but now was not the time.

"Hey, Sachi!"

She stilled, pressing her eyes and lips closed in resignation as Naoki's footsteps jogged toward her. Approaching from behind, Naoki clapped his hand on Sachi's shoulder and grinned sunnily at her.

"Where ya goin'?" he asked amiably. "What's with the bag?"

"I'm running errands," Sachi half-lied.

"You're off work? Let's hang out." Naoki tried to steer her forward with him, but Sachi's feet stayed rooted.

"I'd love to, man, but I'm kinda busy. Maybe later."

Naoki's smile faded, and his shoulders dropped. "Oh. Well, where ya headed? I can walk you there."

Sachi bit the inside of her cheeks, mulling over a suitably vague answer as quickly as she could. "Past the shops."

"Oh, then we're going the same direction!" Naoki perked up quickly and stepped forward again. This time, Sachi grudgingly let him pull her along. They rounded a corner and doggedly ignored two men in hoods quietly exchanging items from their pockets before parting in opposite directions. Sachi focused on Naoki's voice as they passed, and soon they were outside a quiet tea shop. Naoki began to describe a recent mission.

"I was in Konoha again just now," he recounted, "since we're still trying to negotiate terms with their hokage."

"Oh, yeah?" Sachi spoke distractedly.

"Yeah, they've still got a lot of damage from that Orochimaru attack a while back," Naoki continued mildly, only slightly sympathetic for the distant village. "I think people there are still uneasy about it."

"What's it like there?" Sachi asked, suddenly curious. "Are all the people as passionate and patriotic as their war heroes?"

Naoki laughed, subtly maneuvering to an empty outdoor bench. "It's actually kind of a weird place. Talk about culture shock."

Sachi was now thoroughly intrigued and urged him to give more details. She didn't notice that they had stopped walking and were now sitting turned toward each other.

"A lot of them are just really loud. I could hear casual conversations a block away. And they party hard as fuck—the team and I got drinks with a couple locals one night, and their energy was so intense. One minute, they were both like 'go, go, go!' Then one kind of burned out, but the other kept him going; then it was 'go, go, go!' again. And then the second guy got tired, and the first one revved him up this time. And then it was more 'go, go, go!' I thought I was gonna die trying to keep up with them. I threw up twice."

Sachi laughed, unconsciously crossing her legs. "Land of fire, indeed! I wish I could have seen that. And here I always thought _you_ were energetic."

"Oh, I got nothin' on Konoha people," Naoki said. "There was this one little kid in a long-ass scarf who literally screamed in public that he was gonna become hokage. Inspirational, really. Then he tripped on his scarf."

"W-wow. . ."

Naoki sighed, his good humor fading. "I just wish their politics didn't suck so bad. They really are crazy patriotic. I wouldn't mind, though, if Konoha hadn't screwed over the little countries so much."

Sachi nodded. "Suna's like that, too. They expect absolute loyalty from their citizens. The bigger the state, the greater the fear of insubordination. And revolution."

Naoki snorted. "I know getting along with them is important and all, but the Big Five always act so superior. And since they don't take places like Ishi seriously, they just get away with doing whatever they want to us. 'Oh, did our wars destroy your land? Do our trade policies keep you in poverty? Well, what are you gonna do about it?'"

Naoki's mouth twisted with derision, and Sachi shifted her backpack uncomfortably. Ishigakure had allied with Konoha during the Fourth Great Shinobi War and now had tentative peace with Iwa. However, as relations between Konoha and Iwa improved, they gradually soured between Ishi and Konoha. Even though all sides of the war had suffered, it was unmistakable that the smaller countries such as Ishi, the ones situated between the Big Five, had taken more losses per capita and were slower to recover. And the Big Five, since they were larger and had more power, had been able to comfortably neglect Ishi and other unrecognized countries during the postwar transition period even though the bigger countries were the ones mostly responsible for the damage. Some, like Naoki, were bitter about the mistreatment. Sachi could sympathize, but she wasn't very passionate about politics and state-level problems. The community, the people right in front of her at any given moment, were more important to her than concepts as abstract as "the village" or "the nation." Naoki knew her feelings, though, so Sachi didn't try to argue with him.

A waiter arrived to take their orders, and at that moment, Sachi realized that Naoki had finessed her into taking a break with him. Her eyebrow twitched. Naoki ordered two plates of dango.

"Damn it, Naoki!"

Naoki howled a laugh. "You just noticed!"

"I don't have time for this." Sachi stood abruptly. "Bye."

Naoki placed his hand on her elbow and looked at her with large, pleading eyes. "Aw, c'mon, Sachi! We're already here! Just ten or fifteen minutes."

Sachi pursed her lips at him, eyes narrowing and fingers tightening around the straps of her backpack. She was about to open her mouth to retort, but she suddenly felt keenly that she was being watched. She looked past Naoki into the tea shop, her sensing chakra activated. Only four patrons were inside at this hour between lunch and dinner, and two were seated facing her. However, none looked directly at her.

"Sachi?" Naoki turned around on the bench to find what she was staring at.

She would have let it go if she hadn't felt a familiar chakra signature that smoldered like dark fire. Uchiha fire. Every hair on the backs of her arms and neck stood upright, and Sachi knew more than anything else that she wanted to get Naoki out of here.

"Cancel your order," she muttered, not moving her lips. Naoki cast a sidelong glance at her, expression cautious. Then, Sachi spoke up again at her earlier volume. "Sorry, dude, I really have to go."

Naoki played along, sighing wistfully. "All right, all right. Lemme cancel the order."

Sachi's chest tightened as Naoki entered the tea shop alone, but as her eyes followed him, she noticed that one patron had disappeared. No one had passed her on their way out. Something was fishy. She focused on the chakra signature, tracing its origin. It was retreating but still nearby. Sachi's eyes slid to the alley a block ahead. _There_. Anger rippled through her, and she clenched her fist. _Spying on me, huh?_ How long had he been watching her? Did Sachi have to keep her chakra in sensory mode 24/7 to guard against him?

Naoki returned to her side, and Sachi pulled him back the way they came. Neither of them spoke, both too tense for casual chitchat or questions. Once they were back on the main road, Sachi felt a little better since there were more people around now—more people meant a lower likelihood of a fight. However, she was far from relaxed.

"Sachi," Naoki muttered, "what's going on?"

"There's no time right now," Sachi said tersely. "Just go home or go run whatever errands you had planned before you saw me. But be alert, and don't take the straight route home."

Naoki's expression hardened. "No way! If there's trouble, I'm—"

"Naoki!" Sachi interrupted sternly. Naoki closed his mouth, and Sachi smiled at him thinly. "I'll be fine. Just trust me."

Naoki was tense, his feet planted squarely and one hand gripping a kunai tucked in his sleeve. When he grudgingly relaxed, Sachi knew he wouldn't follow her. She'd be able to detect him, after all. Naoki stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched her face closely.

"All right. I'll talk to you later, Sachi."

Sachi's heart twisted with guilt. "Get home safely, Naoki."

With that, he shuffled away, his sandals scuffing the sidewalk. Sachi sighed tiredly and tilted her head back to gaze at the sky. The moon was barely visible overhead, its color washed out by the pale sky around it. It looked more like a sickly, pockmarked face than the enchanting orb normally visible at night, and Sachi tried to ignore the way her gut clenched. Now she had to deal with Itachi.

* * *

 **Author's note:** Ah, I skipped last week's update. I'd already had the chapter written, but I was too sick and depressed to edit and post it. I'm still sick, but my mood is improving, so I hope to continue to see regular readers!


	8. Tomorrow Will Be Certain

8\. Tomorrow Will Be Certain. . .

* * *

As Sachi continued to the old hotel, she was relieved to have gotten Naoki out of the way, but she remained alert and searched for the chakra she'd sensed earlier. After two blocks, she noticed it several yards away. This street was much quieter than the main road; Sachi was the only one out in the open. She didn't want to confront Itachi alone, but this way, no one else had to get hurt if things went south. Itachi's movements stopped. He must have noticed her, too. Sachi clenched her right fist and stepped forward, silently daring Itachi to try something as she approached him. She stopped directly before the entrance to a narrow alley.

" _What are you doing_?" she hissed, not looking at him.

"Going to the hideout," he replied easily.

"Is that so?" she snarled, her chin jutting toward him as she finally looked at him. The man before her didn't look like Itachi at all; all Sachi saw was an average-looking man in plainclothes. But she recognized him as one of the men from the tea shop, and he was without a doubt Itachi. Her blood boiled, and she expanded her chakra, letting more go than she ever had around him so far. "Don't mess with me, Itachi. My life is none of your business."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Sachi seething and Itachi cool and seemingly unaffected. Sachi took another step closer, gaze fixed on his mouth instead of his eyes, which she knew by the flow of his chakra were red. Distantly, she was aware that in her anger, she'd dropped the honorific she normally used with his name, but right now, she didn't care.

"Make no mistake," she uttered dangerously. "It's my job to help you, but don't think I'm going to let the Akatsuki access my private business. I know your every physical weakness, and I could take you down without leaving a trace. If I catch you sniffing around my personal life again . . ."

Sachi cut herself off, suddenly intensely aware of how bold she was being. She realized she meant her threat, though. She did have the advantage of knowing just how Itachi's chakra flowed, and her medical ninjutsu could help or hinder that flow. Plus, she knew about Itachi's chronic pain; the nerves in his shoulder were a weakness that she could definitely exploit to her advantage. And she would, to protect her loved ones.

". . . I'll kill you."

Itachi's face, disguised as a stranger, tightened, and his eyes were cold. "Understood."

Sachi reigned in her chakra, suppressing it tightly as she usually did.

"Let's go," she said flatly and stepped aside for Itachi to walk either in front of her or beside her. He chose, unsurprisingly, to walk by her side, but they kept an uneasy distance between them. Sachi hadn't wanted to flex her power so soon in her working relationship with Itachi; the more cards she kept hidden, the better. But he needed to know that he couldn't disregard her as a threat. She was wary of him now, more so than before, and she wanted him to be wary of her, too.

The air between them as they walked to the old hotel was stifling, but luckily the journey was short. Sachi continued sensing Itachi's chakra the entire way. Neither spoke until they were outside the building, when Itachi released his transformation jutsu. He stood now in the clothes he usually wore under the Akatsuki cloak, but the cloak itself was gone.

"Did Kisame not come with you?" she asked, voice mellower than before. She noticed that his chakra wasn't in the hideout.

"He did," Itachi answered. "We went separate ways when we got here."

Sachi glanced at him sideways, frowning, as they entered the basement. "I see."

Itachi's answer made her only more suspicious. Had the two split up to cover more ground as they spied on her? Was Kisame in her neighborhood now? Or in Naoki's? Sachi grit her teeth but willed herself not to get angry again. She still had to treat Itachi. If she could bring herself to get near him. They walked into the bunker room silently; Sachi went straight to the opposite side of the room to turn on the far lamps while Itachi just as wordlessly lit the lamps closer to the door. Sachi then went to her desk and set her backpack on the squeaky chair. Having nothing else to distract herself, she finally turned to Itachi, who had been watching her with dark, expressionless eyes.

She couldn't let it go, she decided. Even if he lied to her, she had to ask.

"What were you doing in that tea shop?"

Itachi raised his chin slightly. "Having tea. Nothing more."

"I don't believe you."

Itachi said nothing, and his eyes betrayed nothing. That frustrated Sachi.

"Why did you run when I sensed you?" After another long pause, she pressed on, "Itachi-san, working together is going to be very hard if you can't convince me right now that you weren't spying on me."

Itachi's eyes closed, and he breathed steadily. Sachi assumed that he was debating whether to tell the truth.

"I went there as a regular customer," he spoke, eyes opening slowly. "But when I saw you and your . . . friend, I admit I started eavesdropping. So when you became suspicious, I left. At the time, I didn't realize you knew it was me."

Sachi studied him silently. She watched for any subtle changes in Itachi's expression, tone of voice, breathing, and even the flow of his chakra. But she found nothing. Itachi was either a stone-faced liar or telling the truth. Sachi didn't know what to believe. After a while, though, she decided she needed to get this appointment over with.

She had Itachi sit down on the couch where he could be comfortable, and she explained his treatment plan. Sachi would start with high-dose intravenous steroids and 1000-milligram mofetil tablets. The mofetil would help protect his kidneys and prevent them from failing, and with the corticosteroids, it would suppress his immune system to stop the damage to his organs. This part of his treatment would continue for several months, even up to a year or more, to prevent relapse. After a few intravenous treatments of steroids, Itachi would take oral prednisone until remission, which would hopefully take place in about six months. Plan B, if he had a bad reaction or if the medicine simply wasn't effective, was to try cyclophosphamide instead of mofetil. It was more toxic than mofetil, but it was the only other real alternative. She gave him a box of mofetil and told him to take a pill twice a day. Then, she took a vial of methylprednisolone powder out of her backpack as well as a vial of solvent and diluted the solution in a clear bag with isotonic saline. It was time to get to work.

* * *

Itachi watched her open the linen closet, which seemed to store everything but linens, and pull out some long metal rods. Sachi screwed the rods together to form a stand, and she hooked the bag of steroid solution around the top. When the injection equipment was all set up, she had Itachi place his right arm on the sofa's armrest and wiped the inside of his elbow with an alcohol-soaked pad. Itachi didn't look away until a large needle touched his skin, and he winced slightly as he felt it push deeper and deeper. Sachi secured the needle with some tape and stood back with her hands on her hips.

"How's that feel?"

Itachi grimaced at the sensation of fluid slowly entering his body. His skin itched slightly around the needle, and he could tell his arm would feel sore after a while.

"Fine," he said.

Sachi nodded. "We're going to let this drip for the next forty-five minutes. You're probably going to feel really tired, and that's okay. Some slight dizziness is normal, too. But let me know if you feel any pain or burning, or if your heart starts palpitating. Basically, if anything feels noticeably different or wrong, you tell me right away. I'll have to change the dose or try a different solution."

Itachi agreed to tell her if anything felt wrong, and they lapsed into another long silence, this one less uncomfortable than before. Sachi moved her backpack to the desk and pulled out a couple of magazines as well as what must have been a local newspaper. She lifted the reading material up for Itachi to see and asked if he was interested. Itachi squinted but without the sharingan couldn't make out the details of the magazine covers, so he accepted the newspaper. He was immediately interested in an article about Ishi's negotiations with Konoha—Sachi's friend at the tea house had talked about them. Ishi wanted Konoha to lower its tariffs, which had been put in place against Ishi as part of the peace treaty with Iwa, as well as acceptance into the next chūnin exam hosted by the Big Five, as Ishi locals apparently called the Five Great Nations.

This information was revealing in many ways. If Ishigakure had not participated in the standardized exam, then Sachi would have become a chūnin based on Ishi's selection process, which Itachi knew nothing about. He glanced at Sachi, who was flipping through her magazine casually. Maybe she hadn't taken an exam at all. She seemed older than Itachi, which meant she had probably fought in the last great war. If that were the case, Ishi might have promoted her quickly during the war to bolster its ranks or perhaps promoted her after the war in recognition of her contributions.

Itachi lowered his eyes to the newspaper again, still thinking deeply. He remembered the words of Sachi's friend, a young man whose name Itachi either couldn't remember or hadn't heard, and felt the same twist of unease he'd experienced in the tea house. Sachi's friend clearly harbored ill feelings for Konoha, and Itachi was sure other Ishi citizens shared those feelings. He couldn't help but worry if this would spell trouble for Konoha in the future; however, he didn't know right now what he could do about it. He looked up at Sachi again, and his vision blurred and swam a little. He felt lightheaded, and his mouth was dry with a strange taste to it. _Side effects_ , he told himself. Even through the fatigue and dizziness, though, he wondered what Sachi felt about the complicated relations between her village and his. She hadn't said much about the issue to her friend.

After a while, he realized that his eyes had slid closed, and he forced down a swell of panic at the thought that he'd been poisoned. He felt a tap-tap-tap on his shoulder, and he tried to open his eyes but found his eyelids almost distressingly heavy. When he finally managed to pry them open, he felt his eyes roll forward as he blinked slowly.

"Ew, that was weird."

Sachi's voice startled him—when had she gotten so close? Itachi's sight gradually focused on her, and he was alarmed to see her sitting on her swivel chair right next to him, scribbling in the notebook in her binder. Her face seemed strangely large in his field of vision, but her expression was amused.

"You looked like a baby alligator," she told him. "The way your eyes rolled open."

There was a laugh, Kisame's familiar, high-pitched warble, from somewhere to Itachi's left. Itachi turned his head leadenly toward the sound. His head felt as though it were magnetized to the back of the couch; he couldn't lift it except with great effort. Kisame grinned toothily at him from a chair between the couch and the cot.

"Good morning, sunshine," the man teased.

Itachi's eyes widened, and he sat up in sudden dread. Was it really the next day? How had he slept that long?

"Don't worry," Sachi soothed. "It's not morning. You've only been asleep about half an hour. Here, have some water."

Itachi sank bonelessly back into the couch and lifted his hand sluggishly to the clear bendy straw Sachi offered him. He didn't even try to grasp the cup Sachi held—he could barely curl his fingers into a fist let alone hold something firmly.

"I woke you up because it's time to remove the IV. How are you doing? Besides tired."

Itachi nodded, belatedly comprehending that he'd been asked a question. "Uh"—he swallowed, his mouth still dry and weird-tasting—"tired."

Sachi snorted, and Kisame laughed again.

"Is he drunk?"

Itachi frowned in confusion.

"It's just from the medication. High doses can impair cognitive function and cause extreme drowsiness. There are a host of other, much worse, possible side effects, so I think this is pretty normal." Sachi focused on Itachi again, her eyebrows rising. "You okay?"

Itachi thought he might get sick if he moved his head too much, so he opted to mutter what he hoped was an "mm hmm." His field of vision was getting smaller, and his head felt cloudy. Something tapping on his upper arm roused him again, though, and his eyes snapped open.

"I'm taking the needle out," Sachi warned. Then, Itachi felt it sliding under his skin, and he shuddered. His skin felt prickly. She taped a square of gauze over the injection site and continued tapping his arm briskly to keep him alert.

"How long will he be like this?" questioned Kisame.

"An hour or two. Maybe quicker, depending on his metabolism and healing process."

"My mouth tastes strange," Itachi announced dully, entirely unconcerned about interrupting the conversation around him.

Sachi held up the water cup for him again with one hand and made a note in her binder with the other. Itachi took a sip and decided to try holding the glass for himself. His hand grew tired after only a few seconds, though, so he settled for resting the cup on his chest while he sipped from the straw. Dimly, he was aware that he probably looked childish, but his brain was too sluggish to care.

Minutes passed, and Sachi and Kisame talked idly while Itachi recovered. For a long while, Itachi's awareness faded in and out, and he caught only fragments of their discussion. When he was attentive enough, he was a little astonished by the ease and mundanity of the small talk he heard. Had he dreamed Sachi's earlier threat? The brusque suspicion and defensiveness? No, he was certain all that had been real. Maybe Sachi had already put those feelings behind her. Or maybe she just wanted to do her job quickly and be gone. Either way, she and Kisame were being surprisingly civil. Although there were some awkward pauses and evident wariness, and Itachi could tell that they deliberately shared only surface-level information about traveling and hospital work, neither Kisame nor Sachi seemed to harbor any animosity. Despite their mutual lack of trust, they still went out of their way to attempt cordiality. It was impressive, Itachi thought. Their interaction was a testament to humanity's ability to cooperate. If Sachi and Kisame could find a way to get along—if Akatsuki members could get along with each other—why couldn't villages and nations do it? Was peace really so difficult?

* * *

Two days later, Itachi received his third intravenous treatment. Pein had contacted them the previous day for a status report, and Kisame had let Itachi lie about being injured and needing recovery time. Sachi had been in the room, and she'd stared at him and Kisame in bewilderment as they'd suddenly started talking to the air. She'd looked horrified that their leader could contact them whenever and wherever he pleased.

Right now, however, Itachi was alone with a fresh hole in his arm from the prednisone treatment. Kisame had gone out an hour ago to train with Samehada, possibly to "feed" it. Sachi had also left to get potassium and calcium supplements for Itachi. Apparently, his potassium was already low, and she'd learned that the steroids could decrease it further. She'd left her backpack. Itachi was already feeling the drowsiness settle heavily in his body, but for once, his mind was still sharply alert as he stared at the zipped black bag on the desk. He still remembered Sachi's threat, of course—if she caught him prying into her business, she'd kill him. However, telling a ninja not to spy was like telling a raven not to fly. Gathering information was an instinctual drive for Itachi at this point, and he was naturally curious about the item Sachi always carried with her.

But why would she leave it here in the first place? Since she was so protective of her personal space, as she had a right to be, why would she be so careless with one of her belongings? Had she simply been in a hurry, or was this some kind of test? There was a chance she'd booby-trapped the bag in order to ascertain Itachi's trustworthiness.

Pushing through the dullness in his mind, he activated his sharingan. He didn't see any chakra lacing, seals, or other ninjutsu. There was no genjutsu to disguise the bag, either. It was utterly unprotected. Itachi decided that only two circumstances besides sheer forgetfulness, which seemed unlikely, could have led Sachi to trust the backpack in his company: one was that it contained nothing personal to her, which was likely since she seemed to use it only for work. The other was that she expected Itachi to be too physically drained either to care about the bag or to get up and look through it. It wasn't a bad assumption to make on her part. No matter how Itachi's curiosity itched, just moving his head was like pushing through liquid mercury. He glanced at the door.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled his body up as smoothly as he could into an upright position. He waited for the room to stop spinning, and he first scooted to the edge of the couch; then pushed himself up with both hands on the armrest, cringing at the soreness in his arm from the recently removed needle; then, with the wheeled IV stand in his right hand for balance, took swaying steps to the desk. When he finally made it, he had to brace himself with both hands on the desk and take several deep breaths, suppressing a wave of nausea. He was starting to hate his treatment. It felt awful. But it would pass, and he had to take this opportunity to learn more about the person treating him.

The bag, however, contained nothing revealing. Sachi's binder was there, as always, as well as an emergency kit and the reading material she always seemed to have. There were a couple sealing scrolls, both empty, and there was a Bingo Book. That was it. Her wallet was gone, predictably. Itachi opened the binder and found photocopied journal articles and textbook chapters about autoimmune diseases and vasculitis, and pages of illegible handwriting—medical shorthand, probably. He knew it was Sachi's notes about his condition and treatment, but he still wished he could read it. He wanted to know how a medic saw his situation; for Itachi, the experience was singularly unpleasant.

He flipped to the back of the binder, and, finally, something caught his eye. Attached with masking tape to the inside of the back cover was a photograph. A man in a sienna-colored vest, the color reminiscent of the red sandstone around Ishi, and three children, two boys and a girl, all of them wearing Ishi forehead protectors, smiled at Itachi. A genin squad with their jōnin leader. Itachi immediately assumed that it was Sachi's first squad, but no one in the picture looked like her. One of the boys did, somewhat, with his brown hair and eyes and his tan skin. A relative?

Itachi plucked the picture off the binder cover and held it closer to his face to inspect it. The possible Sachi-relative was in the middle with closely cropped hair and a tight-lipped smile; he was the tallest of the children. The girl on Itachi's left-hand side was blonde, petite, and had a sweet, dimpled smile; the boy on the right had short black hair, a small mole above his left eyebrow, and a crooked grin so wide his eyes squinted. He must have been the most exuberant member of the team. With a small twist of his heart that, because of the steroid treatment, made Itachi gag suddenly, he remembered Shisui's crooked smile. He quickly put the picture back down, smoothing the edges of the masking tape.

As the wooziness passed, Itachi replaced the binder as he'd found it and closed the bag, and he realized that he recognized the last boy. The man Sachi had been with at the tea house—he'd had a mole above his left eyebrow, too, and his face looked almost exactly the same, just less round. So the team was the one Sachi's friend had belonged to. Did that mean the child in the middle was actually Sachi?

Itachi couldn't dwell on the question long, for he felt a presence upstairs. It wasn't Kisame's, which meant it had to be Sachi's. He stumbled away from the desk and fell back more than sat on the couch, dragging the IV stand with him. Sachi entered the room, a small plastic bag in one hand, just as Itachi repositioned the stand beside him, and she looked at him curiously.

"Do you need to get up?"

Itachi was still catching his breath from his earlier exertion. So, no, he really did not want to try standing up again. But Sachi didn't need to know that.

"I thought I did, but I'm still too tired," he lied.

Sachi set the bag on the couch cushion next to him. "You sure? I can help you."

Itachi intended to shake his head, but one sluggish turn to the right made him dizzy, so he quickly stopped. "I can wait."

Sachi went to a drawer in her desk and returned with a thermometer covered in plastic.

Hold this under your tongue," she said. "I want to check your temperature."

Itachi obliged and gave the thermometer back when it beeped. Sachi made a little "hmph" sound through her nose as she threw away the plastic covering. Itachi raised his eyes to her questioningly.

"I thought you might have a fever since your face is a little flushed. Your temperature's fine, though," she reassured. "Just don't overexert yourself."

Itachi hummed a noncommittal response.

* * *

After another blood test and urine test on the third day of treatment, Sachi concluded that Itachi was clear to take prednisone tablets instead of injections. On day four, she gave him ten days' worth of pills as well as the pack of mofetil and the vitamins she'd bought, and she told him to come back in a week for more tests and a refill. Both Itachi and Kisame found the frequent check-ups frustrating since they were often busy with assignments, but Sachi was adamant that the treatment's initiation was the most critical period and required close monitoring. She had originally planned to send Itachi off with only a seven-day supply of prednisone, but he'd convinced her to give him more in case an emergency delayed him.

Kisame, apparently, found endless entertainment in reminding Itachi to take his pills every day and generally treating him like an old man. Itachi was not nearly as amused.

"Are you sure you want to eat that?" Kisame asked with feigned concern, pointing to the vegetable-stuffed baozi in Itachi's hand. Rain dripped from his straw hat onto his finger. "It might be too chewy for your dentures."

Itachi sent him a withering glare but said nothing, choosing instead to bite into his food indignantly. Kisame chortled. His voice rose above the pelting rain, a quiet pitter-patter that had followed them for days now. The gray had sunk over the land soon after they'd left Ishigakure and hadn't lifted for more than a few minutes at a time. Itachi lost his appetite halfway through his baozi, so he wrapped it in the paper that had come with it and tucked it into his coat.

* * *

A month into the treatment, Sachi had told Itachi multiple times that things were going well. Itachi hoped so; personally, he didn't feel as though much had changed. He was still tired most of the time, and his appetite continued to diminish. He occasionally had dizzy spells because of the prednisone, but those tended to occur only in the first hour after taking a dose. And his shoulder and arm still hurt most of the time. What was even worse, though, was the idea of enduring more of the same for the next four to six months. Itachi struggled to share Sachi's optimism about his recovery.

He had run out of potassium supplements over a week ago, but he didn't feel pressed to get more. He knew he should buy them, but he always had some other priority to address, and taking his vitamins was really just another chore. Plus, Sachi herself had said that the supplements were just precautionary; they weren't necessary like his medication. In fact, she didn't seem worried now as she sealed samples of Itachi's blood in a scroll. Her face was clearly visible in the dimming light from the gas lamp on her desk; there were no troubled lines between her eyebrows, and her jaw was relaxed. Therefore, Itachi wasn't worried, either.

Kisame clicked his tongue and shook his head, chiding him. Itachi answered with a disdainful look. Sachi watched them with a curious simper—was her expression amused or exacerbated? It was hard to tell. She didn't stay long enough for Itachi to figure it out, however. She bid them good day, since they had actually managed to meet in the morning before her hospital shift, and she promised to see Itachi the next day to restock his medication and treat his shoulder. After that, Itachi and Kisame went separate ways to relax or train separately before meeting again for lunch. This casual schedule was strange for Itachi. He was so used to the grind of the Akatsuki's missions that he sometimes forgot what it was like to stay in one place for more than a day. He certainly wasn't used to returning to the same place regularly. Ishigakure, with its dark alleyways and even shadier residents who spoke roughly and pocketed mysterious bags and parcels around nearly every corner and spat freely on the ground, was beginning to feel comfortable. Itachi was nothing if not adaptable.


	9. To Bring Worse than Today

9\. . . . To Bring Worse than Today

* * *

Sachi had been wearing herself thin for the past month. Between Itachi's checkups, she was paranoid about being spied on by either him or Madara, and she spent most of her free time training vigorously. She did very little socializing, mostly out of fear that the Akatsuki would learn about her personal connections to use them against her but also partly because Naoki, her closest friend, would barrage her with questions the moment she saw him. Luckily, he was often busy with missions, and with her sensory abilities, Sachi didn't have a hard time evading him. She felt terrible about it, though, and she missed Naoki dearly. She just didn't know what she would say to him, what excuses she could convince him of, when he finally confronted her. Even worse, she had no idea if Naoki would believe her if she lied, and she couldn't predict how he'd react if she told him the truth. She knew the confrontation would happen eventually, but she continued to forestall it out of dread. Her anxiety was starting to eat into her sleep.

Today, though, Sachi had a small stroke of luck—the hospital's laboratory had had no waitlist that morning, so she'd been able to run Itachi's blood screens right away. This meant they were done by the time she took her lunch break. She sat at the break room table with two convenience-store onigiri and took a bite out of the tuna one as she held up the test results with her free hand. Itachi's readings were largely unchanged from his last test, except for. . . Sachi's eyes widened and her tongue stilled, leaving her mouth full of food. Her hand unconsciously lowered the onigiri to the table.

"Goddamn it, Itachi!" she cursed under her breath.

She swallowed her food after minimal chewing and hastily stuffed the rest of her lunch into her pockets. She went straight for the emergency staff's supply of electrolyte replenishers and grabbed three packets of oral potassium tablets as well as three bags of 30 mEq potassium chloride, and then she moved as quickly as she could without actually running to her locker. There, she shoved the potassium and test results into her backpack. She then found her manager and quickly rattled off an excuse for taking the rest of the day and the next day off, claiming to have a family emergency. Her urgency must have been convincing, for her manager, who was normally an inflexible woman, let her go without any questions.

Once she was out of the hospital, though, Sachi felt lost. Where would she find her dumb-ass patient who was too _dumb_ and lazy to buy potassium supplements and now had severe hypokalemia? In fact, how the hell was he still walking? His heart could give out at any moment—did he not _feel_ that? Getting impatient with herself, Sachi thought she ought to go back to the hideout. The idiot would be there at some point soon, right?

A loud caw above her made her look up. A small crow was in the tree just overhead, looking at her with strange, beady eyes.

Sachi pointed at it with a shout of recognition. "Ah! You!"

The crow ruffled its wings and turned its head at her. Sachi swung her backpack to the ground and tore a strip of paper out of her binder. She scrawled _EMERGENCY_ on one side of the strip and on the other side added _HIDEOUT_ , just in case the _dumb idiot_ was too _stupid_ to figure out where to meet her. She rolled up the paper loosely and jutted it toward the bird. The crow swooped down and snatched it out of her hand—Sachi flinched only a little—with its beak before flying away. Sachi watched it ascend for only a moment before she hurried to the old hotel; if Itachi wasn't already there, she would have everything set up once he did arrive so that she could pump potassium into him as quickly as possible. She'd start with just feeding him the tablets, but she suspected that his severe hypokalemia would require an infusion, too. It wouldn't be fun for him; adding potassium, even diluted, directly to the bloodstream tended to itch and burn, sometimes quite a lot. And it would be a lot of work for Sachi since she'd have to break out the old EKG machine stowed in the hideout's linen closet, and she'd have to monitor Itachi's heart and electrolytes continually for at least thirty-six hours. She once again cursed Itachi's idiocy.

* * *

Itachi and Kisame finished lunch quickly since Itachi was tired and particularly uninterested in food. Itachi didn't like to take naps, but today, he found the idea irresistible, so he decided to go back to the hideout to rest a while. Just as they were about to part ways again, though, a crow cawed loudly in the sky. Itachi and Kisame looked up and found the bird circling above them. It landed deftly on Itachi's shoulder, spit out a piece of paper, and promptly left. Itachi caught the paper, which was already unrolling itself to reveal jagged edges as though it had been ripped haphazardly. Although the paper was upside down, Itachi could clearly make out the word _HIDEOUT_ in Sachi's narrow handwriting. The message didn't make much sense on its own, so he flipped and turned the paper and saw _EMERGENCY_ on the other side.

"What is it?" Kisame asked.

"A message from Sachi," Itachi answered. "I'm going back to the hideout."

"An emergency? Should I come too?" Kisame's voice bordered between concern and mocking, and Itachi couldn't tell which tone his partner intended.

"I doubt that's necessary."

Kisame's lips pulled back in neither a smile nor a grimace. "Still, I'll go with you. Maybe you two could use a hand."

Itachi really didn't think Kisame needed to be with him, but he didn't protest. Perhaps the man had gotten bored of spending the day alone. Or maybe, like Itachi, Kisame found complete solitude more unsettling than his partner's company. Itachi didn't want to think about it too deeply. With the little energy he had, he channeled chakra to his legs and feet and, jumping onto the nearest rooftop, sped off to the hideout. He didn't know what Sachi's emergency could be, but he took her message seriously.

* * *

Once Itachi and Kisame were in the hotel room, they were unsurprised to see Sachi waiting and a little distressed. However, they were a little taken aback to see a white box with a digital screen and buttons sitting on the small side table beside the couch, and neither of them had expected Sachi to turn her aggravation onto Itachi.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" she snapped by way of greeting.

Itachi stopped and sent her a perplexed look.

Sachi shoved a pill and a glass of water toward him, the same glass he'd used every time he'd taken a steroid injection. "Take this now. Your potassium is low—dangerously low. Have you eaten today?"

Her voice was stern, almost as though she were lecturing a subordinate, and it somewhat irritated Itachi. However, he took the pill and the water, swallowing both before he answered. He could feel Kisame watching him.

"A little," he said.

Kisame's breath huffed behind Itachi. "Hardly anything."

Sachi nodded her head as if she'd expected that answer. Then, she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out, of all things, a plastic-wrapped onigiri.

"Eat this. Potassium will absorb better and cause fewer side effects if you eat."

Itachi felt his stomach sink as he accepted the onigiri. He couldn't eat this whole thing; he wasn't hungry at all. Sachi sighed, and the sound pulled Itachi's attention away from the offending food in his hand.

"Please, just eat it," she enjoined. "Even if it's not a flavor you like, you need to eat something. After you eat, I'll attach a heart monitor to your chest and check your blood pressure."

Itachi opened his mouth, but Kisame spoke first. "A heart monitor? Is his potassium that low?"

"Yes," answered Sachi gravely. "It's low enough that his heart could stop at any moment."

"You're staying here for at least the next thirty-six to forty-eighty hours. I can't send you out until I'm sure your potassium level stabilizes and that your heart can function."

Itachi nodded and eyed the onigiri again sullenly. As he sat on the couch, he unwrapped the rice ball and bit into it. A hint of sweet and sour vinegar met his tongue, and he knew a pickled plum would be in the center of the onigiri. He didn't dislike the flavor, but he had to force himself to finish the entire ball.

While Itachi chewed miserably, Kisame asked Sachi why low potassium was dangerous. Itachi listened with interest as she explained that it was an electrolyte essential to muscle function, including that of the heart. Too much could cause muscle cramps, heart palpitations, and trouble breathing, and too little could cause weakness, low energy, and dysrhythmias. She added that hypokalemia, which Itachi assumed was the medical term for low potassium, was more common in people with dehydration from illness or exercise or with a caloric deficiency. Itachi knew that Sachi suspected the latter, that he wasn't eating. It agitated him. He _knew_ he wasn't eating enough, so he didn't need to be chastised like a child. Besides, it was Sachi's treatment that lowered his appetite, so he didn't think his current condition was entirely his fault.

He didn't want to say any of these thoughts aloud, though, because he knew picking a fight with the medic treating him would be unwise. He also knew his irritation would pass; over the past few weeks, he noticed that he had less patience for inconveniences and little annoyances, but he had still managed to keep his cool so far. He wasn't the type to snap at people.

Sachi glanced at him again and, seeing that he'd finished the onigiri, went to the white box beside the couch and unraveled some wires. She told Itachi to remove his coat, which he did with only slight resentment.

"Go ahead and take off any mesh armor, too," she added. "You can put your shirt back on after."

Itachi again did as he was told, willfully ignoring the fact that two people were watching him. Once he was appropriately dressed, Sachi tugged his shirt collar down, wiped his skin with alcohol, and attached two pads below his clavicles and one directly over his sternum. She then had him lift the hem of his shirt, and she sanitized his skin again before applying two more sticky pads, one on each side of his ribs.

"I don't need to remove my shirt?" Itachi asked when Sachi stepped back.

Sachi's mouth twisted a little with thought as she turned on the EKG machine. "Technically, you should, but since you won't be moving around much and you'll have to wear this thing for several hours, it'll be fine. I figured you'd be more comfortable with your clothes on."

Once the heart monitor was set correctly and working, Sachi went to her backpack and pulled out her black binder. She made some notes, her eyes never leaving the monitor, but all Itachi could think of now was the photograph he'd found weeks ago. He always forgot about it until he saw that binder, and now he had to resist the urge to ask Sachi about its significance as she wrapped a manual blood pressure cuff around his arm. The cuff tightened until he could feel his arm pulsing, but Sachi was removing the cuff shortly after and tucking it back into the drawer from which she'd extracted it.

"Your blood pressure is a little low today," she announced, again jotting notes in her binder. "Probably from not eating."

"Kisame-san," she addressed suddenly, surprising both Itachi and Kisame, "would you mind giving us the room? I understand your concern for your partner, but there are some confidential matters I need to discuss with Itachi-san."

Kisame and Itachi shared a looked, both curious about Sachi's "confidential matters." Itachi nodded his consent, and Kisame willingly left the room, declaring that he'd be back in a few hours. This wasn't the first time Sachi had requested privacy with Itachi to discuss his health—she never ended up saying anything that Itachi would have minded Kisame hearing, but he knew that her caution was part of her due diligence as a medic. Itachi was grateful for her level-headedness in that regard. Although he didn't entirely trust her, he thought Sachi had been a reliable aid so far.

Now that the room was less crowded, Sachi pulled her swivel chair from the desk and sat before Itachi. She was almost knee to knee with him, and her hands were folded politely in her lap. She didn't look him directly in the eye for more than a split second, but her expression was probing.

"Is there something you want to talk about? Regarding the treatment or anything else? Something you didn't want to say in front of Kisame-san?"

Itachi frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you're not eating," she answered. "Usually, that's a sign of something else going on."

Itachi had a hunch that she was referring to both his mental health as well as possible symptoms of his illness. He considered playing dumb and asking what she meant, but he wasn't in the mood for unnecessary chatter.

"I haven't been hungry," he stated. "It wasn't as bad before the treatment started."

Sachi looked at him gravely. "So the decreased appetite has gotten worse."

Itachi nodded. Sachi sighed quietly and lowered her chin, appearing to think deeply about something. When she raised her head again, her gaze was worried, even compassionate.

"Is there anything else? How's your mood been? And your sleep?"

Itachi resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. "The same. But . . . I suppose I've been more irritable lately."

Sachi nodded once, her expression turning serious again. Itachi wasn't used to having someone's full attention like this, except sometimes from Kisame. He found it a little unnerving.

"Mood changes can occur because of the medication," she explained. "How bad is the irritability? Would you say that it's seriously affecting your life?"

Itachi was quick to dispel that concern. "No. It's nothing serious."

"All right." Sachi nodded again. "Don't forget to update me about things like that. Psychological effects can be serious."

* * *

Four hours later, Sachi had given Itachi another potassium tablet and completed two electrolyte screenings. It really was a lot of work—she was forced to go back to the hospital for the first test, which had necessitated careful sneaking to avoid her manager. Luckily, she had run into Reina and had convinced her not only to help her but also to keep quiet about the tests. Reina was a smart woman, and although she didn't quite understand Sachi's need for secrecy, she seemed to have understood that the tests were important. So now Sachi had made her civilian coworker a spy of sorts.

She had left a special scroll with Reina, one of the two that she normally kept in her backpack. The two scrolls were linked with a special jutsu so that Sachi would be able to transport small objects between the scrolls instantly; they were useful tools that Ishi had used frequently during the war. The only issue was Reina's lack of chakra to open her scroll. Sachi, however, had figured out a way around this requirement several years ago, when she was still a young ninja during the war. In order to send something to a person too weak to summon chakra, such as a wounded ninja or a civilian, Sachi could flood the receiving scroll with her own chakra before giving it away so that it would release the received object automatically once it was opened. In war, this was a risky practice that Sachi hadn't used often since an "open" scroll was more vulnerable to theft, but it had come in handy a few times for quick deliveries of medicine and supplies. Normally, she infused a scroll with only enough chakra for one delivery; however, this time, she'd had to channel enough chakra to break the seal entirely without damaging its link to her second scroll.

And, to Sachi's pleasure, it had worked.

At the hospital, she'd tested the modified scroll with a pencil, and it had transferred fine. She would be able to send Itachi's blood samples to Reina, who had agreed to hide her scroll and check on it every two or three hours, and Reina would send the test results to Sachi with one of the hospital's messenger hawks. The hawks were trained to go directly to Ishi's capitol building, but the old hotel was almost directly within the hawks' flight path, so they would be easy to intercept as long as Sachi kept an eye out for them for an hour or two after delivering the samples. She felt bad for involving someone else, especially someone as sweet as Reina, but she told herself that since Reina didn't know the details of Sachi's activities, she would be fine.

Now, Sachi was crouching atop the hotel's crumbling, precarious roof to receive results from the second test she'd ordered. She kept her sensory chakra focused on Itachi several feet below her, in the hideout, since she couldn't watch him directly while she waited for the messenger hawk. Sachi was also glad to get out of that room, though, and away from Itachi. The guy stressed her out, even when he wasn't doing anything.

The streets around her were quiet, most of the nearest residents either still at work or hidden safely within their homes. The winter sun was already setting, and a cold wind was beginning to stir the dry air. Sachi shivered and hugged herself tightly. She had put on only the sweater she normally wore at work, leaving her thicker jacket downstairs, since she'd hoped the sun would still be out before the test results arrived. However, she was beginning to regret that decision.

Below her, a monstrously large chakra pricked her awareness. She leaned cautiously closer to the edge of the roof and spotted a familiar black coat with red clouds topped by a head of blue hair approaching the building. When he was near enough, she called out to him.

"Kisame-san."

The man looked up and raised his hand to grip Samehada's hilt. His teeth were bared in a growing smile that looked more menacing than anything else. "Were you looking for me?"

Sachi tensed when she saw Kisame's arm move. Was he trying to start a fight? "No. I'm waiting for something."

"Sending messages to an Akatsuki base? That's a little bold, don't you think?" Kisame's grin widened.

Sachi rolled her eyes and redirected her gaze to the sky. "It's important. I didn't want to keep returning to the hospital because it's too risky, so I'm having his test results delivered."

She expected Kisame to understand and continue into the hideout; however, in a flash of movement, he was standing before her on the roof, all his impressive height towering above Sachi's crouched form. Sachi suppressed the impulse to stand up defensively; she knew she'd have more of an advantage if she stayed low.

"And whom do you trust enough handle those tests and send them to you?" he challenged, his hand still casually resting on Samehada's hilt.

"A good medic," Sachi answered curtly. "She doesn't know who the tests are for; all she knows is that she's doing me a favor. I can handle it."

"Hmph!" Kisame chuckled. "Well, that's a relief."

Sachi's eyes narrowed at his sarcasm, but she didn't respond because a large hawk suddenly came into view. She stood now, a movement which caught Kisame's attention.

"That's it," she said.

Kisame turned to follow Sachi's line of sight. "It's not coming directly here?"

"No, the hawks go to the capitol. We have to intercept it. _Without_ killing it," she emphasized upon seeing Kisame's hand tighten around his great sword.

Before Kisame could act, Sachi threw a kunai at the bird. A long, thin wire stretched out behind the kunai as the weapon made an arc over the hawk, and when the kunai began to drop, Sachi aimed a small shuriken at it. The weapons clinked off each other, the shuriken flying into the wall of an adjacent building and the kunai looping back toward Sachi. It lodged itself by her feet, and Sachi tugged on the wire. The bird squawked as its wings were pinched shut and it was yanked forcefully downward. Sachi caught the hawk, took the message attached to its leg, and, once she verified that the paper was for her, sent the hawk flying back to the hospital.

"A little more complicated than fishing, eh?" Kisame quipped.

Sachi smirked and let out a short, breathy laugh. She was pleased with her shurikenjutsu's accuracy; her increased training had definitely been good for her. Her satisfaction waned, however, as she read the results of Itachi's electrolyte panel.

"No good?" Kisame asked, reading Sachi's fallen expression.

Sachi shook her head. "His potassium is still too low. Let's go see him."

* * *

Back in the hideout room, Sachi explained to Itachi, and Kisame now that he was present, that she needed to start an IV drip of potassium chloride. The tablets alone just weren't raising his potassium quickly enough. Itachi didn't think the change was a huge concern, until Sachi informed him that a direct infusion could be painful. However, since they didn't have any other options besides risking Itachi's heart failure, he merely sighed and accepted the treatment.

Less than fifteen minutes into the infusion, Itachi realized that Sachi's warning had been seriously understated. The potassium burned—worse than actual fire—in his veins. Itachi did his best not to complain, but he couldn't sit still. Every muscle clenched sporadically in response to the pain. Sachi quickly noticed and had Kisame help him to the cot so he could lie down. In another ten minutes, Itachi was groaning, and his back arched as the medicine scorched his insides. He ground his teeth, and occasionally one of his arms or legs would spasm on its own. His gut cramped so tightly he thought he might vomit. He finally caved and asked Sachi if there were no alternative treatments. Sachi looked at him regretfully.

"I'm sorry, Itachi-san. This is really the only way." She bit her lip. "I can dilute the solution a little more, though. That should reduce the burning and the muscle cramps."

"Yes," Itachi grunted through clenched teeth.

"It's best to sleep through it," she advised. "So even though it's hard, just try to relax, okay?"

Itachi didn't have the strength to answer, but mentally, he demanded, _How do you expect me to sleep like this?_

It took a few minutes for the change in the solution to take effect, but the adjustment did help a little. Itachi was still deep in hell, though. Pain prickled and sparked until fire blazed in his veins—and then, it would stop, but only for a moment. Every now and then, he noticed that he was clutching the sheet under him in balled fists, and he forced himself to open his hands. However, whenever he did this, some other part of his body would tighten up, so he was continuously trying and failing to relax. He knew even without Sachi's eventual update that his heart rate and blood pressure were elevated—how could they not be? He struggled to regulate his breathing and kept pushing his body against the cot.

He inhaled shakily, holding his breath so that it wouldn't come out a whimper, and he plunged into his mind, diving deep to escape his current state. He couldn't let himself think about anything; any thought would bring him back to the surface. He had to endure.


	10. Through Fire and Deep Water

10\. Through Fire and Deep Water

* * *

Sachi felt awful. She chewed her nails until they bled as she watched Itachi strain and wince. She had never seen such a strong reaction to potassium chloride. Kisame looked horrified. This, she knew, would be their entire dreadful night: Itachi in excruciating pain while Sachi and Kisame watched helplessly from across the room. Although she made sure Itachi continued to drink water, sitting up was suffering for Itachi. It wouldn't be much better when it was time for him to eat.

Her stomach growled at the thought of food. None of them had had dinner yet. She looked at Kisame, who was sitting on the couch with his eyes glued to Itachi. It was surprising, and endearing, to see him so worried about his partner. The sight reminded Sachi that the Akatsuki were human beings, people with emotions and attachments just like her.

"Um, Kisame-san," she called softly. When he turned to her, she continued, "Are you hungry?"

"Ah, I could eat."

"We should make a food run," she suggested and glanced at Itachi. "He needs to eat, too, but I don't want to give him anything too heavy. Does he like congee?"

Kisame was frowning, but he nodded. Sachi went to her backpack and fished out her wallet. She handed a few notes to Kisame, who accepted them with a raised eyebrow.

"There's a soup place a few blocks from here, on eighth and one forty-third. Get something for yourself, too. And if you don't mind. . ."

For a moment, Kisame seemed too stunned to anticipate Sachi's request, but after shaking himself, he smirked a little and tucked the money into his coat.

"And for you?" he asked.

"Just miso is fine. Please." Sachi worried about her tone of voice. She didn't want to offend the intimidating man she was asking a favor from. "I would go myself, but if something goes wrong here. . ."

She and Kisame looked again at Itachi, his back curling and eyes screwed shut, and Sachi winced. She couldn't finish her sentence.

"Of course," Kisame soothed in that lilting, always somewhat sinister voice of his. "I'll leave it to you."

Sachi watched him leave, half afraid that he might turn around and attack her without warning. He didn't so much as glance at her.

* * *

Hours passed. They could have been seconds or days; he could have been trapped in Tsukuyomi. It didn't matter. Fire prickled under his skin. Some time ago, Kisame had evidently gotten food, and Sachi had made Itachi eat. He'd managed to finish half a bowl of plain congee before shoving it away, stubbornly ignoring Sachi's pleas for him to eat more. In pain and irritable from forcing himself to eat, he'd nearly snapped at her to mind her own business. Instead, he'd chosen to lie back down and bury his consciousness again. Sachi had taken more blood from—apparently, his potassium was rising, but only very slowly. So she kept the potassium solution at the same miserable level. It didn't matter, though; nothing affected Itachi when he sank deep enough into his heart. He could make a bubble around himself to block out the things that hurt, a bubble submerged in a fathomless cave. Light couldn't reach him here, and neither could pain.

In this way, he drifted into a light sleep. However, he now found himself half-awake and shivering with a sharp pain stabbing at his right leg. His thigh twitched and seized, forcing his knee to bend reflexively. He gnashed his teeth and held his breath, trying to stay silent as the muscle spasm eased away. The room was dark. Even with his eyes still closed, he could tell some of the lights had been turned off. He was cold, despite the burning in his veins. Sachi had given him two blankets from the linen closet, yet he couldn't stop shivering. He wanted to curl up on his side, but moving burned and ached. Plus, shifting around too much tugged on the wires connected to his chest as well as the IV in his arm. He couldn't get comfortable at all.

As he became more alert, he picked up on Sachi's and Kisame's voices murmuring quietly nearby. The sound was a hushed, steady rumble punctuated by the soft _fwip fwip_ of something like paper shuffling. It reminded him of late nights at the Anbu headquarters: teammates leafing through intel reports or whispering over playing cards as they awaited orders. Was that what these two were doing? Playing cards?

"I meld three eights." That was Sachi's voice, followed by a low papery slap. "Aaaaaand"— _fwip_ —"your turn."

Kisame chuckled. More shuffling sounds. "Don't mind if I add another."

A huffy breath—Itachi couldn't tell if Sachi had cursed or simply sighed. He wasn't sure what game they were playing, but it hardly mattered. He was astonished that they were playing a card game at all. And a little indignant—he had to suffer in silence while they waited idly. Another flare of pain licked his veins, this time in his right elbow near the injection site, and he barely suppressed a hiss as the muscles in his arm convulsed.

When his arm finally relaxed, his thoughts turned, as they usually did when he was alone, to Sasuke. What was he doing now? Itachi had heard that he'd defected to Orochimaru. The news troubled Itachi. He understood that this would be part of Sasuke's quest for power, but he knew Orochimaru was treacherous. Even among the Akatsuki, the snakelike man had been slippery and deceitful. The fact that he continued to evade the Akatsuki's punishment for betrayal was a testament to his cunning. But Sasuke would take care of himself. He'd had to for several years now.

Suddenly, Itachi's chest tightened. He coughed roughly, the spasms in his lungs inflaming the sharp pain all over his body. But still his chest tightened, seemed to cave in on itself, took his breath away, until he was totally spent. Footsteps approached, and a hand was on his arm. The touch made him open his eyes, and Sachi's face, blurry though it was, came into view. She spoke to him, but her voice didn't reach him. He simply closed his eyes again. He felt hollow. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling; in fact, it was a sensation he'd long gotten used to.

Sachi didn't stay long; she and Kisame were now talking again, probably about him. Itachi didn't care. If they had time to whisper on the other side of the room, then his condition wasn't any more urgent than it already had been. This was fine. He was fine. He was cold and burning, and his limbs kept tightening and twisting on their own, and the pained seemed as though it would never end, and he was all alone. But he'd be fine.

Another bitter pang gripped his heart. And he was all alone.

* * *

More time passed; how much, Itachi couldn't tell. The minutes seemed to drag like long fingers in mud. Eventually, all but one lamp was turned off, and Kisame and Sachi agreed to monitor Itachi in shifts. Itachi had overheard that conversation while he pretended to sleep. He turned his head to the far wall where Kisame sat with his legs crisscrossed and his eyes closed. Although he appeared to rest, Itachi knew by the set of his jaw and by his posture that he was awake. Kisame apparently was taking the first shift. In the front of the room, Sachi lay on the sofa. Itachi could just see the top of her head on the armrest and the curve of her hip indicating she was on her side. He didn't know her as well as he knew Kisame, so he couldn't tell whether she was actually asleep.

Normally, Itachi enjoyed silence, but right now, the quiet made him feel only more isolated. It heightened his own wakefulness, and he felt more uncomfortable than ever. The needle in his arm seemed to poke more sharply, and stinging, itching pain all over seemed to intensify. Thankfully, the spasms had decreased; he hadn't had one in a while now. But he still felt restless. Anxious. And he couldn't help but wonder if the others could hear his shivering. Normally, he liked the quiet, but now, the pressure not to disturb the peace weighed on him in a way he wasn't used to.

Itachi closed his eyes and focused on Kisame's presence. He tried to breathe deeply, but the exaggerated movement in his chest burned and made him want to cough, so he stuck to a comfortable range. He shuddered, and his left arm bent inward on its own, spasming and sending a sharp jolt through his shoulder. Itachi nearly choked in his effort to swallow a gasp. He grasped the sheet under him tightly. He was _sick_ of this—why couldn't his body just let him relax? Why did he alone have to endure this?

Itachi's eyes burned now as they squeezed shut, and a lump formed in his throat. Why did he have to go through any of this? His breath hitched.

 _Shisui_ , his heart called morosely, _what am I doing?_

He wanted to go home. He wanted his mother's food and his own bed. He wanted to sleep next to his baby brother, still small and sweet with soft, spiky hair and a too-hot little radiator for a body and a scent that was still fresh like a baby's.

Remembering to exhale, he concentrated on Kisame again. He let the irrational thoughts slip away, and the lump in his throat melted. He wondered vaguely what finding Kisame soothing said about himself, but he didn't want to dwell on it. This was all he had, after all.

When the panic subsided and he felt calm again, Itachi became aware of a heavy discomfort under the waistband of his pants. He made himself ignore it. Going to the toilet now would not be an easy task with the IV and heart monitor attached to him, and he wasn't sure he'd even be able to reach the bathroom on his own in his current state. If possible, he wanted to spare himself _that_ humiliation.

He wished Kisame were nearer. His emotions still felt raw, like they could slip through the cracks of his control at any moment. Normally, Kisame had some small talk on hand, and Itachi would have appreciated some banter to distract himself. It could ground him when he was . . . distracted. The same had been true with Shisui, too. Right now, however, since Sachi was supposed to be sleeping, Itachi didn't want to disturb her with unnecessary noise.

"Hm? Itachi-san, are you awake?"

Kisame's low voice reached him. Itachi wondered if he'd shifted or made some sound unconsciously to alert him. He could tell Kisame was watching him, but he kept his eyes closed.

"Yes," he said hoarsely, his throat sore and dry. "What time is it?"

There was a beat of silence.

"A quarter to one," answered Kisame.

Itachi hummed under his breath. He didn't actually care about the time; he'd just voiced the first thought that seemed appropriate.

"How long have you been awake?" Kisame questioned.

Itachi swallowed dryly. "A while."

He heard Kisame sigh almost imperceptibly. It was so soft that Itachi thought he wasn't supposed to hear it.

"Do you need anything? You still have food leftover."

Itachi shook his head tiredly. He was thirsty, but his bladder was already full, and his skin still prickled. He didn't need to make his situation more uncomfortable.

After that, Itachi felt quite calm again. He slept some more, in a manner of speaking. The best he could manage was to stop thinking and lie still, but his body remained stubbornly awake. He was still shivering, and the constant stream of fire in his blood still made him itch and ache—sometimes he wanted to rip his skin off, but he avoided scratching himself. And his left shoulder throbbed. This pain was both a blessing and a curse: resting peacefully was more and more difficult because of it, but it distracted him from the burning everywhere else.

By the time Sachi's watch began, Itachi was more awake than not. She checked on the measurements of his heart that the EKG machine had spit out, and she reported, despite Itachi's profound disinterest, that all was normal. His blood pressure was still slightly elevated, but she didn't seem concerned, and Itachi couldn't care about a single thing outside his pain. Sachi told him she would draw more blood in the morning when he colleague's shift began, and Itachi summoned all his energy to respond with a muttered "fine."

"How's your shoulder?" she asked softly.

When Itachi looked at her, Sachi had bags under her eyes, and her hair was frizzy on one side. Her usual high ponytail was lopsided and loose, with some of her hair falling around her neck and face. She appeared almost as tired as Itachi felt, but she was giving him an odd look that he hadn't seen on her before. He couldn't pinpoint why, but he thought she was trying to read him for something not related to his pain.

"It's starting to hurt," he grunted, shifting his gaze to the ceiling.

Sachi's hand was on his shoulder now. He winced when her fingers pressed at the juncture of his neck.

"Bad?" she guessed.

Itachi clenched his jaw and eyes shut, his hands gripping the sheet under him. Waves of pins and needles shot from his shoulder down his arm and made his skin burn and itch worse. The pain choked him.

Sachi said nothing more. Her hand flattened against his shoulder, and a steady stream of warmth flowed into him. After a few minutes, his muscles relaxed, and even the itching on his left side subsided a little. Itachi felt his body drop against the cot. He hadn't realized how tightly wound he'd been until now, as the tension suddenly evaporated. Sachi's hand moved, her fingers bending slightly.

"I'm going to massage into your shoulder a little," she announced, whispering. Itachi was instantly tense again. "It might feel a little weird, but it shouldn't hurt. Let me know if it's unbearable."

Itachi didn't respond, but Sachi didn't wait for him to. Something in her chakra felt different, and he wondered if that were something he should be worried about. However, he was more concerned with the perturbing sensation in his shoulder. Sachi had gripped the muscle at the top of his shoulder and was _rolling_ it, if that was what Itachi could call the motion. He opened his eyes, grimacing at the ceiling.

"You all right?" Sachi checked.

Still frowning, Itachi mumbled, "I suppose."

"Any pain?"

Itachi thought about it as his upper body rocked from Sachi's pushing. Something under Sachi's hand popped, _crunched_ even, silently whenever the muscle rolled a certain way, and it made him cringe. He didn't like it. But there was no sharpness or extra burning.

". . . No."

"Good. Turn your head to the right."

Itachi did, and he almost regretted it. Sachi's other hand now rested lightly behind his ear, keeping his head in place, while the kneading hand worked gently up the side of his neck. It was strange and uncomfortable but not as much as the popping in his 's thumb pressed a long line up his neck, and Itachi could tell where she found knots. Whenever she ran over a little bump under his skin, she would dig her fingers into it, sometimes making Itachi wince. A sharp twinge would tug in his shoulder every now and then, and it would make the prickly, cramping pain in his right side burn worse. As Sachi worked back downward, he was a little distressed to feel her fingers slide toward his back, over his shoulder blade, but he hid his discomfort by staring at the wall.

This wasn't the kind of discomfort he'd expected when Sachi had said "massage." He'd expected the intimacy of physical contact to bother him more than the actual sensation, but, although being touched _was_ disquieting, the actual massage was just . . . It almost _hurt_. Sachi seemed to approach it like a strategic attack on his muscles instead of anything soothing. Itachi didn't mind this approach since he wouldn't have been comfortable anyway, but it wasn't pleasant. He was beginning to wonder what good this was supposed to do for him.

Just as he had that thought, however, he noticed a _difference_. Sachi's hands pulled away, and Itachi's whole left side felt . . . looser. He felt his face slacken with surprise.

"Try moving your shoulder," Sachi suggested. "How's it feel?"

Itachi turned his head to the left, back to the right, and then back to center, and he shrugged his left shoulder, squeezing it upward before letting it go. It felt weird, almost empty. It didn't feel like his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said, awestruck. "What did you do?"

"The soft tissue massage just helps push the chakra deeper," Sachi revealed. "And it helps to physically work out muscle tension. You have a lot, like, a _lot_ , of tension, so I'm sure some of the areas I went over were pretty tender. But it does help. I tried not to bruise you, but it probably didn't feel great."

Itachi nodded, bringing his left hand up to his neck and shoulder. Now if only the potassium treatment would end.

* * *

It did come to an end, of course, twelve hours and two blood tests later. Sachi kept him confined for another three hours. She would have kept him longer, but Itachi could tolerate no more. He was feeling completely recuperated—despite his lack of sleep, he had more energy now than he'd had in weeks now that his potassium was higher than it had been at the start of his steroid treatment. It was astonishing, really, how one simple electrolyte could make him feel so different. He was also determined never to let his potassium sink so low again and vowed privately to make himself really eat at least twice a day. He wasn't sure he could keep a resolution to eat more than that, for his appetite still left much to be desired. Sachi seemed to anticipate his plight, though; she gave him two boxes of food pills from one of her desk drawers.

The rest of the night had gone . . . less horrifically. The muscle spasms had ceased entirely by dawn, and the pain ebbed and flowed in an unpredictable pattern. Though unpredictable, it still gave Itachi much-needed breaks from the constant _burning itching stinging_. He _had_ ended up going to the toilet, and Sachi _had_ had to help him get there. Asking her had been a blow to his pride; however, he'd done the rest himself and without incident, and for that he was grateful.

Sachi ended up leaving at three in the afternoon, her energy all abuzz and hurried in a way that gave Itachi the impression that she was just as relieved to get away as he was. Kisame had been oddly quiet as he and Itachi watched her pack up the medical equipment she'd used. However, he was ready to leave when Itachi was, so they went on their way shortly after 'd given him enough medication for six weeks and told him to come back in a month; that gave Itachi and Kisame a decent break from Ishigakure, a break which Itachi now needed. He was beginning to associate this place, especially the hideout, with _sickness_ , and he didn't like to linger.

* * *

 **Author's note:** Thank you for all the faves and follows! I even got another review, haha. I'm always pleasantly surprised to see people reading my work. Ah, about Itachi. . . Things will get better . . . until they get worse . . . Poor guy. :/


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